Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) THE VANITY GIRL _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ THE VANITY GIRL POOR RELATIONS SYLVIA & MICHAEL PLASHERS MEAD SYLVIA SCARLETT Harper & Brothers _Publishers_ THE VANITY GIRL _By COMPTON MACKENZIE_ _Author of_ "POOR RELATIONS" "SYLVIA SCARLETT" "SYLVIA & MICHAEL" [Illustration: colophon] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON THE VANITY GIRL Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published September, 1920 _TO FAY COMPTON_ _My dear Fay._ _For several reasons I am anxious to inscribe this book to you. Unless somehow or other I safeguard you publicly, you are liable to be accused by gossip of having written it, an accusation that both you and I might be justified in resenting. Many people suppose that you wrote an earlier novel of mine called_ Carnival, _which, were it true, would make you out to be considerably older than you are, since I take it that even your precocity, though it did run to marriage at the age of seventeen (or was it sixteen?), would hardly have allowed you to write_ Carnival _at the same age. One day, if Mr. Matheson Lang will allow me to use my own title--at present he is using it for a play that he and somebody else have adapted from an Italian original--you may act the part of Jenny Pearl; but that is as near as you will ever get to her creation. Then lately a young gentleman wrote to ask me if I would inform him whether the generally accepted theory that you had written the first two chapters of_ Sinister Street _had any existence in fact. So you see, I do not exaggerate when I say that you are liable to be credited with_ The Vanity Girl. _Equally I should not like gossip to pretend that the heroine if not drawn by you was certainly drawn from you; and though any friend of yours or mine would laugh at such a suggestion, it is just as well to kill the cacklers before they lay their eggs. But the chief reason for inscribing this book to you is my desire to record, however inadequately, what pleasure and pride, dear Fay, your charm, your talents, your beauty, and success have given to_ _Your affectionate brother,_ _Compton Mackenzie._ _Capri_, August 4, 1919. THE VANITY GIRL _The Vanity Girl_ CHAPTER I I