Mrs Ingram's voice was a trifle apologetic as she looked towards where Norah Boyce sat, turning her head from side to side to listen to the pronouncements of her fellow guests, sometimes serious, sometimes smiling, but always with that little wistful pucker of the brows which of late had become a settled expression. It seemed at the moment as if it would be more sensible to inquire what Norah did _not_ want, for a very harvest of last straws had combined to break her back within the last two years. She was an orphan, but having been possessed of a moderate, but comfortable income (five hundred a year to wit), had contrived to lead a sufficiently full and agreeable life during the half-dozen years which had elapsed since she had left school. She paid visits, she travelled abroad with congenial friends, she had a room at a ladies' club, and stayed frequently as paying guest with such of her friends as were not overburdened with this world's wealth. Everyone was pleased to entertain a pretty, particularly sweet-tempered girl, and to receive five pounds a week for the privilege, for there was no meanness about Norah, she looked upon money simply as a means to an end, spent lavishly, and was as ignorant as a doll as to the investments from which her income arose. She knew by reference to her bank-book that a cheque for about a hundred pounds was due in December, and was convenient for Christmas gifts, and that another--about fifty--arrived in time for the July sales. She knew that her receipts varied, but that, of course, was the result of a Liberal Government, and would come right with its fall from power! On one occasion a cheque never came at all, and it appeared that something had gone wrong in America, and that it never would come any more. Norah felt very indignant with her trustee, and was convinced that the loss was entirely his fault. She asked pathetically what was the _use_ of having a trustee, and felt very Christian and forbearing, because she was quite civil to him when they next met,--from all which it will be gathered that Norah Boyce was a survival of the old-fashioned, unworldly, more or less helpless young women of a past generation. She had not been trained either to work, or to think for herself; her education had not specialised on any one subject; her value in the wage-earning market was exactly nil, and before the end of her twenty-fifth year her income had fallen to nearly the same point.