Before the autumn of her disastrous summer had waned, the younger Miss Pounce found herself firmly established in the very position which had been the object of her wildest dream. She was head of the millinery department of the great Bond Street mantua maker. Like her unexpected patroness, it might seem that her cup of happiness was full. But there is no factor in the calculations of existence so easily forgotten as that most important item of all; the human heart. Pamela, in making her courageous plan of life, had forgotten to reckon with her heart! And this tiresome, irresponsible, uncontrollable organ began to trouble her exceedingly. In those hours of leisure when she was not concocting delightful schemes for the breaking of other people’s hearts--for every one knows what a killing hat will do--she found herself considerably inconvenienced by the peculiar conduct of her own. Said Miss Polly Popple, of the millinery department, to Miss Clara Smithson, the book-keeper: “You mark my words, my dear, there’s something up with that young woman Pounce! She’ll be getting herself into a regular scandal with that dashing young spark of hers! And if she ain’t got something on her conscience already ... I don’t know the signs!” Miss Smithson leant forward, wheezing heavily. “Providence ain’t always unjust, Polly,” she said, “and people do come by their rights, no matter how many viscountesses is against them!” “Ah,” said Polly, swelling her fine bust, and looking at herself in the fly-blown glass which hung over the chimney in the little room at the back of the Bond Street shop where she was sitting, after hours, with her friend. “That was a bit of jobbery, that was! There isn’t one in the establishment, I do believe, that wasn’t struck all of a heap when they heard that a strange young female was put into old Mrs. Dodder’s place instead of me, which the next in rank is always, by law, you might say, entitled to. Lady Kilcroney being that prodigious in the fashion--not that I was ever one to admire her; give me breeding!--and Madame Mirabel being so set on cutting out Madame Eglantine--not that she ever will, and you mark my words, for London ain’t Paris, I say, and that I’ll maintain, and you may talk yourself blue in the face, Clara, and you won’t alter that! If it hadn’t been for that put-up job, ’tis I’d have been head of the millinery here this moment.”