This was one of the first occasions on which she had revealed to her father that she had been thinking a good deal about her lot in life, and was perhaps beginning to doubt whether the struggle to become a great and famous actress was the only thing worth living for. But he paid little attention to it at the time. He had a vague impression that it was scarcely worth discussing about. He was pretty well convinced that his daughter was clever enough to argue herself into any sort of belief about herself, if she should take some fantastic notion into her head. It was not until that night in Manchester that he began to fear there might be something serious in these expressions of discontent. On this bright October morning Miss Gertrude White was about to begin her domestic inquiries, and was leaving her room humming cheerfully to herself something about the bonnie Glenogie of the song, when she was again stopped by her sister, who was carrying a bundle. "I have got the skins," she said, gloomily. "Jane took them out." "Will you look at them?" the sister said, kindly. "They are very pretty. If they were not a present, I would give them to you, to make a jacket of them." "_I_ wear them?" said she. "Not likely!" Nevertheless she had sufficient womanly curiosity to let her elder sister open the parcel; and then she took up the otter-skins one by one, and looked at them. "I don't think much of them," she said. The other bore this taunt patiently. "They are only big moles, aren't they? And I thought moleskin was only worn by working-people." "I am a working-person too," Miss Gertrude White said: "but, in any case, I think a jacket of these skins will look lovely." "Oh, do you think so? Well, you can't say much for the smell of them." "It is no more disagreeable than the smell of a sealskin jacket." She laid down the last of the skins with some air of disdain. "It will be a nice series of trophies, anyway--showing you know some one who goes about spending his life in killing inoffensive animals." "Poor Sir Keith Macleod! What has he done to offend you, Carry?" Miss Carry turned her head away for a minute; but presently she boldly faced her sister. "Gerty, you don't mean to marry a beauty man!" Gerty looked considerably puzzled; but her companion continued, vehemently,-- "How often have I heard you say you would never marry a beauty man--a man who has been brought up in front of the looking-glass--who is far too well satisfied with his own good looks to think of anything or anybody else! Again and again you have said that, Gertrude White. You told me, rather than marry a self-satisfied coxcomb, you would marry a misshapen, ugly little man, so that he would worship you all the days of your life for your condescension and kindness." "Very well, then!" "And what is Sir Keith Macleod but a beauty man?"