Vassilissa Beggoe stooped to take a final look at herself in the small mirror, for she was so tall that, in her flowery bonnet that swooped upwards from her piled chignon, she nearly touched the sloping roof of her bedroom. She stooped and gave a glow--half smile, half a quickening of light, over her whole face--at what she saw in the cloudy glass, which could not materially dim her white and gold splendour. A slight thickness of modelling here and there, notably in the short nose and too-rounded chin, blurred the fineness of her beauty and might make for hardness later on, but now, at twenty-one, Vassie's wonderful skin and her splendid assurance were too dazzling for criticism to look at her and live. She gave a pat, more approbation than correction, to a rose on the bonnet, smoothed the lapels of her Alexandra jacket--so-called after the newly-made Princess of Wales--and pulled up her gloves under its pegtop sleeves. Then she turned with a swoop and a swish of her wide blue taffeta skirts. "There!" she exclaimed in the studiously clear notes she had not been able to free from a slight metallic quality; "that's not so bad a sight to go and meet a little brother, I believe?" The younger, softer, slighter bit of femininity on the bed gave a gentle little sound that meant admiration, and clasped a pair of dimpled, not very clean, little hands together. "You're beautiful, Vassie, just beautiful. And just like a lady...." "I am a lady," said Vassie sharply. "How am I not a lady, I should like to know? Haven't I been four years in a boarding-school, and don't I go and stay with a clergyman's family in Plymouth? A lady.... When I was at Plymouth last month for the Prince's wedding celebrations one of the officers of a battleship asked who I was!" "I know, you've told me. Vassie--" "Well?" "Nothing. Only I sometimes wonder why you've never got wed up there to Plymouth. One of those officers, or perhaps a clergyman...?" Vassie rather wondered herself, but all she said was: "I'm not going to give up my freedom for the first man who lifts his little finger, I can tell you. I haven't such a great opinion of the menfolk. Conceited creatures, the most of them. I mean to pick and choose. And I mean Ishmael to help me." "Oh, Vassie, how?" came from the wide-eyed listener on the bed. "Why, I shall make him bring his school friends down, of course. They're all gentlemen. And then I shall make them fall in love with me." "But won't they be a lot younger than you, Vassie? You're three years older'n Ishmael." "Some of 'em may be older than him, mayn't they? And one thing leads to another. We might both get asked to stay with their folks. Besides--I don't know that I should mind a man younger than me. I'd know more what to do with him. I've always found boys easier. Men are so funny--as if they were always keeping something to themselves. I don't like that."