In England she had never lacked for invitations and cordial welcome. But what’s the pleasure in that to a dress-fond girl who has next to nothing to wear? And Ivy Gilbert found more rasp than joy in favors and entertainment she could in no way return. Her rich and aristocratic relatives one and all liked her, courted her even. Her charming, dainty ways; her quick, if not deep wit; her radiant face; her exquisite voice, more than paid her way—if only she could have realized it—but she did not. Several of her richer kinswomen banded together to give the girl a good time—two of them offered her gifts of gowns and ornaments—and one of them, her godmother, and a spinster, gladly would have “dressed” and “presented” her. The good times she accepted now and then, but the gifts she would not have. Riding lessons, a very good saddle-horse and its keep, she could not resist when her godmother presented them on her fifteenth birthday; but that was the only breach that generous, affectionate Lady Kate ever was able to make in the girl’s pride. Pin money and chiffons, old or new, Ivy would have none. She had inherited her father’s adamant honesty. She loathed going without, but she would not sponge. Friends and relatives of lesser purse and rank reached out towards her kindness and welcome as ready and cordial. But their simpler lives and homes attracted her weakly. From some old-time ancestor—perhaps one whose name she had never heard—Ivy had inherited an inordinate pride of race, an affinity with luxury and ease. Mayfair seemed to her home; Balham and West Kensington did not. Her own equivocal social place, the mixture of gentle and nobody in her veins, tried her sadly. She thought of herself bitterly as a sort of social mongrel. And she blamed and despised the grandmother who had refused a duke and married an architect of minor ability, less success and humble birth. The little leasehold home in which her father had died—safely settled on his wife at his wife’s own provident suggestion—became Ivy’s absolute property. She sold it at once. It little more than sufficed to pay outstanding and funeral accounts. Fifty odd pounds, a handful of trinkets, a shabby assortment of clothes she disliked, and her father’s absurd assortment of books, were all that she had in the world. But she had no lack of friends—sincere and eager-to-prove-it friends. Several homes were offered her, and, incidentally, two not quite desperately ineligible husbands. She refused them all, and set her wits to work as to how they and she were to earn their living and hers. And Charles Snow—her mother’s sister’s son—and Emma his wife put their heads together to outwit Ivy’s. And where others, as ready but less skilful to befriend, failed the Snows succeeded—measurably.