Agatha leant forward with her chin on her two hands, her elbows on her knees. Her hair hung almost to the ground. She was looking into the coals with thoughtful eyes. The elder tactician waited in respectful silence. "Suppose--" said the girl suddenly, and stopped. "Yes, my darling." "Suppose we accept the Danefords' invitation?" "To go to Malta?" "Yes, to go to Malta." Mrs. Ingham-Baker fell into a puzzled, harassed reverie. This modern warfare was so complicated. The younger, keener tactician did not seem to demand an answer to her supposition. She proceeded to follow out the train of her own thoughts in as complete an absorption as if she had been alone in the room. "The voyage," she said, "would be a pleasant change if we selected a good boat." Mrs. Ingham-Baker reflected for a moment. "We might go in the Croonah with Luke," she then observed timidly. "Ye-es." And after a little while Mrs. Ingham-Baker rose and bade her daughter good-night. Agatha remained before the fire in the low chair with her face resting on her two hands, and who can tell all that she was thinking? For the thoughts of youth are very quick. They are different from the thoughts of maturity, inasmuch as they rise higher into happiness and descend deeper into misery. Agatha Ingham-Baker knew that she had her own life to shape, with only such blundering, well-meant assistance as her mother could give her. She had found out that the world cannot pause to help the stricken, or to give a hand to the fallen, but that it always has leisure to cringe and make way for the successful. Other girls had been successful. Why should not she? And if--and if-- The next morning at breakfast Mrs. Ingham-Baker took an opportunity of asking Mrs. Harrington if she knew Malta. "Malta," answered the grey lady, "is a sort of Nursery India. I have known girls marry at Malta, but I have known more who were obliged to go to India." "That," answered Mrs. Ingham-Baker, "is exactly what I am afraid of." "Having to go on to India?" inquired Mrs. Harrington, looking over her letters. "No. I am afraid that Malta is not quite the place one would like to take one's daughter to." "That depends, I should imagine, upon the views one may have respecting one's daughter," answered the lady of the house carelessly. At this moment Agatha came in looking fresh and smart in a tweed dress. There was something about her that made people turn in the streets to look at her again. For years she had noted this with much satisfaction. But she was beginning to get a little tired of the homage of the pavement. Those who turned to glance a second time never came back to offer her a heart and a fortune. She was perhaps beginning faintly to suspect that which many of us know--namely, that she who has the admiration of many rarely has the love of one; and if by chance she gets this, she never knows its value and rarely keeps it.