What was she? From whence and whither speeding? Not an actress. That fresh, close-textured skin had never known paint on its flower-like surface. The cheeks were not even rouged; indeed, after the flush of bustle, the colour of them was now settling back in a curious ivory pallor, which went well with the ardent hair. No fine lady’s young woman; every movement had betrayed conscious independence. A shop-girl? The wife of some small merchant? Nay, ’twas the impersonation of maiden liberty, and what shop-girl could encompass such a wealth and detail of modishness? She caught his gaze upon her, leaned forward and smiled. He had already noticed that her smile was rather dazzling. He quite blinked to find it addressed to himself. “I trust, sir,” said she, “my bandboxes do not incommode you?” “By no means, madam,” answered he civilly; and moved his long, thin legs back a further fraction beneath the seat. “I haven’t been home,” said she, “for four years, and luggage do grow when one has five young sisters at home, sir, and presents run to hats.” “To hats?” he repeated, with that interested air that obviates the audacity of a question. “Along, sir,” said Miss Pounce, and her smile broadened, “with me being in the millinery business.” She drew herself up with a very pretty and, to his mind, becoming pride. “A business,” he said, “which I take it, madam, is in a flourishing condition.” “You may say so, sir.” Her pride increased. “Since Miss Pamela Pounce--that’s me!--has been made head of the department, Madame Mirabel can scarce execute the vast number of orders.” “Upon my word!” He had removed his spectacles, and was smiling on her in his turn in a kindly, detached, faintly satiric way. “I trust Madame What’s-Her-Name recognises her debt to you?” The head milliner gave her curls ever so slight a toss. “Well, sir, she wouldn’t like to lose me. She knows I’m worth my weight in gold to her.” His glance flickered over her comely proportions. Tall, generously made, he had called her a nymph. “Goddess would have been the better appellation,” murmured he. “Well, ’tis a comfort to an old man like myself to meet one so youthful to whom work is proving both fruitful and blessed.” Miss Pamela Pounce didn’t need any old gentleman to commend her. She knew the value of work, and who better? And if it was blessed to her, why she took good care that it should be. And, as to content with her lot--sure, if she hadn’t been, she wasn’t a fool, she’d have picked out another for herself. “’Tis some old clergyman,” she thought, and laughed. “He’ll scarce know what a hat means. Clergyman’s wives and daughters in the country would give any woman of taste bad dreams for a fortnight. There was Mrs. Prue Stafford. Had she not still to learn that to wear pink and blue with such cheeks as she had was positive vulgar? And she married to the finest of fine gentlemen.”