I tried to be agreeable to a lady who was next me. She was a Christian Scientist, and wore glasses. She endeavoured to convert me, but I was abnormally thick-headed that day, and had to have things explained over and over, so she gave it up at last. Finally when I felt I should do something desperate, a footman came to say Lady Verningham wished to see me in her room, and I bounded up--but as I got to the door I saw them beginning to shake their heads over her. “Sad that dear Ianthe has such irregular habits of breakfasting in her room--so bad for her,” etc., etc., but thank heaven, I was soon outside in the hall, where her maid was waiting for me. One would hardly have recognized that it was a Montgomerie apartment, the big room overlooking the porch, where she was located. So changed did its aspect seem! She had numbers of photographs about, and the loveliest gold toilet things, and lots of frilled garments, and flowers, and scent bottles, and her own pillows propping her up, all blue silk, and lovely muslin embroideries, and she did look such a sweet cosy thing among it all. Her dark hair in fluffs round her face, and an angelic lace cap over it. She was smoking a cigarette, and writing numbers of letters with a gold stylograph pen. The blue silk quilt was strewn with correspondence, and newspapers, and telegraph forms. And her garment was low-necked, of course, and thin like mine are. I wondered what Alexander would have thought if he could have seen her in contrast to Mary! I know which I would choose if I were a man! “Oh, there you are!” she exclaimed, looking up and puffing smoke clouds. “Sit on the bye-bye, Snake-girl. I felt I must rescue you from the horde of Holies below, and I wanted to look at you in the daylight. Yes, you have extraordinary hair, and real eyelashes and complexion, too. You are a witch thing, I can see, and we shall all have to beware of you!” I smiled. She did not say it rudely, or I should have been uppish at once. She has a wonderful charm. “You don’t speak much, either,” she continued. “I feel you are dangerous! that is why I am being so civil to you; I think it wisest. I can’t stand girls as a rule!” And she went into one of her ripples of laughter. “Now say you will not hurt me!” “I should not hurt anyone,” I said, “unless they hurt me first--and I like you--you are so pretty.” “That is all right,” she said, “then we are comrades. I was frightened about Robert last evening, because I am so attached to him, but you were a darling after dinner, and it will be all right now; I told him you would probably marry Malcolm Montgomerie, and he was not to interfere.” “I shall do nothing of the kind!” I exclaimed, moving off the bed. “I would as soon die as spend the rest of my life here at Tryland.” “He will be fabulously rich one day, you know, and you could get round Père Montgomerie in a trice, and revolutionize the whole place. You had better think of it.”