After everything had been settled she found herself the richer by a sum of sixty-eight pounds odd. She kept the eight odd and put the sixty in a bank. It struck her as rather ironical that she should benefit by her father’s death. Yet somebody had to have the money, so it might as well be she. With the eight pounds she bought herself some pretty dresses. For the first time in her life she could afford to put the question, “Will it look nice?” before “Will it wear well?” She experienced the keen joy of dressing from the artistic rather than from the strictly utilitarian point of view. She did not believe in “mourning”: her first dresses were reddish brown to match her hair, and white to throw her hair into vivid contrast. Always it was her hair that had to be considered.... When you saw her dressed up you would certainly not call her pretty, but you might confess to a sort of attractiveness.... CHAPTER X ACCELERANDO § 1 SHE waited fully ten minutes in the drawing-room at “Claremont.” “Mr. Verreker will be here directly,” the maid had said, and Catherine had time to look about her. It was a lovely May evening: the windows were wide open at the bottom, and from the garden came the rich cloying scent of wallflowers. Somebody was working a lawn-mower. He came in two minutes after the sound of the lawn-mower had ceased. There were scraps of grass about the fringes of his trousers. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced briskly. “Don’t mention it,” she murmured, with perhaps a trace of sarcasm. “I oughtn’t to, really, ought I?” he then said, “since you kept me waiting an hour last Saturday.” She said nothing, but the atmosphere was definitely hostile. He asked her what pieces she played. She told him. He took a sheet of paper, and scribbled them down as she recited them. He made no comment till she had said, “and a few others.” “Ambitious!” he muttered, pondering over the list. “Oh yes, I am, very.” She thought she would seize this opportunity of letting him know. “Well, play the Debussy,” he said. She did so. “H’m!” he said, when she had finished. § 2 After he had told her her faults (which took some time) and given her something definite to practise, the hour was nearly up, and he gave sundry indications that the lesson was finished. “By the way,” he said, as she was on the way to the door, “_did_ you forget last Saturday?” She might easily have said yes. Or she might have told the strict truth, viz. that she had forgotten the hour he had fixed. But she did neither. “No,” she said, “I just didn’t come.” He looked at her very much as Miss Forsdyke had looked at her when she had been impudent. “Oh!” he replied, with a gesture that might have meant anything. “Well, the next time you intend to ’cut’ one of my lessons, drop me a card beforehand, then I shan’t be kept waiting for you. My time’s valuable.” Curt!