The experiment, now over a year old, seemed to have turned out well. If Vida really did not love her native land, she seemed to enjoy well enough what she called smiling 'the St. Martin's Summer' of her success in London society. * * * * * She turned over in her bed on this particular May morning, stretching out her long figure, and then letting it sink luxuriously back into relaxed quiescence with a conscious joy in prolonging those last ten minutes when sleep is slowly, softly, one after another, withdrawing her thousand veils. Vaguely, as she lay there with face half buried in her pillow, vaguely she was aware that Wark was making even more noise than common. When the woman had bustled in and bustled out several times, and deposited the shoes with a 'dump,' she reappeared with the delicate porcelain tray that bore the early tea. On the little table close to where the dark head lay half hidden, Wark set the fragile burden down--did it with an emphasis that made cup and saucer shiver and run for support towards the round-bellied pot. Vida opened her heavy-lidded eyes. 'Really, Wark, you know, nobody on earth would let you wake them in the morning except me.' She sat up and pulled the pillow higher. 'Give me the tray here,' she said sleepily. Wark obeyed. She had said nothing to Vida's reproof. She stood now by the bedside without a trace of either contrition or resentment in the wooden face that seemed, in recompense for never having been young, to be able successfully to defy the 'antique pencil.' Time had made but one or two faint ineffectual scratches there, as one who tries, and then abandons, an unpromising surface. The lack of record in the face lent it something almost cryptic. If there were no laughter-wrought lines about the eyes, neither was there mark of grief or self-repression near the mouth. She would, you felt, defy Time as successfully as she defied lesser foes. Even the lank, straw-coloured hair hardly showed the streaks of yellow-white that offered their unemphatic clue to Wark's age. The sensitive face of the woman in the bed--even now with something of the peace of sleep still shadowing its brilliancy--gave by contrast an impression of vividness and eager sympathies. The mistress, too, looked younger than her years. She did not seem to wonder at the dull presence that seemed to be held there, prisoner-like, behind the brass bars at the foot of the bed. Wark sometimes gave herself this five minutes' _tete-a-tete_ with her mistress before the business of the day began and all their intercourse was swamped in clothes. 'I meant to pin a paper on the door to say I wasn't to be called till ten,' said the lady, as though keeping up the little pretence of not being pleased. 'Didn't you sleep well, 'm?' The maid managed wholly to denude the question of its usual grace of solicitude. 'Yes; but it was so late when I began. We didn't get back till nearly three.'