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Sacrifices of this nature are sos as mixed as those which actuate them; and Mrs Peniston remarked to her confidential maid that, if any of the fah for forty years she had been thought co of her own curtains), she would certainly have preferred Miss Grace to Miss Lily Grace Stepney was an obscure cousin, of adaptable manners and vicarious interests, who "ran in" to sit with Mrs Peniston when Lily dined out too continuously; who played bezique, picked up dropped stitches, read out the deaths fro-roo Gladiator in the , and the seven-by-five painting of Niagara which represented the one artistic excess of Mr Peniston's temperate career

Mrs Peniston, under ordinary circumstances, was as much bored by her excellent cousin as the recipient of such services usually is by the person who perforreatly preferred the brilliant and unreliable Lily, who did not know one end of a crochet-needle from the other, and had frequently wounded her susceptibilities by suggesting that the drawing-roo forto decide whether the backstairs needed re-carpeting, Grace's judgment was certainly sounder than Lily's: not to mention the fact that the latter resented the sh she thought a house ought to keep clean of itself, without extraneous assistance

Seated under the cheerless blaze of the drawing-room chandelier--Mrs Peniston never lit the lamps unless there was "co down vistas of neutral-tinted dulness to a e like Grace Stepney's When she ceased to amuse Judy Trenor and her friends she would have to fall back on a Mrs Peniston; whichever way she looked she saw only a future of servitude to the whier individuality

A ring at the door-bell, sounding eh the empty house, roused her suddenly to the extent of her boredoh all the weariness of the past months had cul If only the ring meant a summons from the outer world--a token that she was still remembered and wanted!

After some delay a parlour-maid presented herself with the announce to see Miss Bart; and on Lily's pressing for a more specific description, she added: "It's Mrs Haffen, Miss; she won't say what she wants"