What an odious woman! What a horrible woman! What on earth does she mean? Oh, if only she were poor, and if only the Earl of Longleat hadn't taken her up, how she would crush her now beneath aristocratic scorn. But--well, it never does _quite_ to fall out with so much money, and lose all the dinners, balls, and receptions which the wealthy widow gives right royally in the season. So the ire is smothered and the frowns dispelled, and only the sweetest of phrases issue from lips that are absolutely trembling with hatred and disgust. The rooms grow emptier and emptier. The last visitor leaves, and Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe leans back in her most comfortable chair, and laughs softly to herself in the glow of the firelight. "We don't raise _that_ sort down our way," she says, "and I'm glad of it. Well, I think I riled 'em with that bit about Anastasia, and it's no cram either. She is uncommon pretty, and ought to take. I shouldn't mind getting a bid for her, only she's that sweet on Keith I'm afraid it won't be easy. But he don't care a red herring for her--_that_ I know. I wonder what's become of the girl he told me of in N' York that fall. He ain't married her, and when I asked him why, he cut up mighty rough, and as good as told me to mind my own business. But I like that Keith. I wish he seemed a bit happier, that I do. He's not near so spry and lively as he used to be. How all these women are after him! Guess I got a rise out of them _that_ time. My, if they knew he was coming here to-night! 'Taint none of their business though, and I don't mean it to be. I think I'll keep the dragons off him better'n most. I and--Anastasia!" And she laughs again, a pleasant, cheery laugh, not with any insincere modulation or false ring like the laugh of Society. But with all her vulgarities and eccentricities, Mrs. Bradshaw B. Woollffe is a genuine woman. She pours herself out another cup of tea, and looks complacently round her pretty room; and as she looks, there comes the sound of a step on the stairs, and the door is thrown open, and a tall figure comes straight to her amidst the obscurity, and she springs up to welcome him with a cordiality so genuine that Society would doubtless call it vulgar. "Keith, my dear boy--so you've come. I'm _real_ glad to see you, that I am." Her visitor takes the two hands she extends him, and returns their warm pressure. Then she forces him into a chair by the fire, and stirs the logs into a blaze, and brings him some tea, and fusses about him in a pleasant, genial, womanly fashion that is all her own. Keith Athelstone accepts her attentions with laughing opposition against the amount of trouble she is taking; but on the whole he likes it, and he likes her too, for she has been a kind friend to him in days gone by, when he was only poor and struggling--a stranger in a strange land, not yet having "struck ile" in the way of fortune and success.