clothing and donned everything new, the dress and the opera cloak, the necklace, and, as she had seen the ladies do in the theater, she wore a ribbon through her hair. In this guise Old Mole surprised her. He was ravished by her loveliness, but was so taken aback by all these secret doings, so tickled by her simplicity, that he laughed. He laughed indulgently, but he sapped her confidence, reduced all her pleasure to ashes, and there were tears, and she wished she had never come to London, and she knew she was not good enough for him, but he need not so plainly tell her so nor scorn her when she tried to make herself so: other women had pretty clothes, women, too, who were hard put to it to make a living. He soothed her and said if she would wear her silks and fine array he would take her out next time Robert came. "I don't want to go out with Robert." "Why not?" "If I'm not good enough to know your sister, I'm not good enough to know your brother." "That isn't reasonable." She was ruffled and hot, and in her heart annoyed with him for coming in on her like that, for she had planned to take him by surprise on their first evening's pleasuring. She did not want to be soothed, and preferred sparring. "Your sister's in town, isn't she?" "Yes." "Have you seen her?" "No." "You have." "I have not." He knew why she was sparring; he knew that to disappoint a woman in the vanity of her clothes is more immediately dangerous than to treat her with deliberate insult or cruelty, but he was exacerbated by her unfair onslaught on Robert, and he was sore at the attitude taken toward him by his family. Robert had done his best, but the rest were implacable; they would not admit his right to his own actions independent of their opinion. Not content with holding their opinion, they communicated it to him in the most injurious letters, written at intervals most nicely calculated for his annoyance. To a philosopher in search of tolerance and an open mind all this had been ruffling. The quarrel blew over. Matilda dried away her tears, and he begged her pardon and promised to give her another evening dress finer even than that, made at a real, smart, fashionable, expensive dressmaker's. . . . Shyly and diffidently they entered a famous house in Albemarle Street and were told that without an introduction the firm could not make for madam. A splendid cocotte in glorious raiment swept by them and out into the street. She had a little spaniel in her arms and a silver-gray motorcar was awaiting her. Into this she mounted and was whirled away. With something of both contempt and envy the stately young woman who had received them gazed after this vision of wealth and insolence. Old Mole and Matilda felt very small and crept away. Old Mole said: "The wealth of London is amazing. A man would need at least ten thousand a year to amuse himself with a woman like that." Matilda said: "A creature like that!" And a little later she said: