"If it would amuse you to try," Emily answered, "I will begin one for you. Lady Maria has several pairs of wooden needles. Shall I?" "Do, please. How kind of you!" In a pause of her conversation, Mrs. Ralph, a little later, looked across the room at Emily Fox-Seton bending over Lady Agatha and the knitting, as she gave her instructions. "What a good-natured creature that is!" she said. Lord Walderhurst lifted his monocle and inserted it in his unillumined eye. He also looked across the room. Emily wore the black evening dress which gave such opportunities to her square white shoulders and firm column of throat; the country air and sun had deepened the colour on her cheek, and the light of the nearest lamp fell kindly on the big twist of her nut-brown hair, and burnished it. She looked soft and warm, and so generously interested in her pupil's progress that she was rather sweet. Lord Walderhurst simply looked at her. He was a man of but few words. Women who were sprightly found him somewhat unresponsive. In fact, he was aware that a man in his position need not exert himself. The women themselves would talk. They wanted to talk because they wanted him to hear them. Mrs. Ralph talked. "She is the most primeval person I know. She accepts her fate without a trace of resentment; she simply accepts it." "What is her fate?" asked Lord Walderhurst, still gazing in his unbiassed manner through his monocle, and not turning his head as he spoke. "It is her fate to be a woman who is perfectly well born, and who is as penniless as a charwoman, and works like one. She is at the beck and call of any one who will give her an odd job to earn a meal with. That is one of the new ways women have found of making a living." "Good skin," remarked Lord Walderhurst, irrelevantly. "Good hair--quite a lot." "She has some of the nicest blood in England in her veins, and she engaged my last cook for me," said Mrs. Ralph. "Hope she was a good cook." "Very. Emily Fox-Seton has a faculty of finding decent people. I believe it is because she is so decent herself"--with a little laugh. "Looks quite decent," commented Walderhurst. The knitting was getting on famously. "It was odd you should see Sir Bruce Norman that day," Agatha Slade was saying. "It must have been just before he was called away to India." "It was. He sailed the next day. I happen to know, because some friends of mine met me only a few yards from your picture and began to talk about him. I had not known before that he was so rich. I had not heard about his collieries in Lancashire. Oh!"--opening her big eyes in heart-felt yearning,--"how I wish I owned a colliery! It must be so _nice_ to be rich!" "I never was rich," answered Lady Agatha, with a bitter little sigh. "I know it is hideous to be poor." "_I_ never was rich," said Emily, "and I never shall be. You"--a little shyly--"are so different." Lady Agatha flushed delicately again.