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has such lovely eyes, and they have always such a pleading expression, as if she were asking you for something—something you couldn’t give her; and her manner is perfectly fascinating, and her voice and everything are quite different from other girls. It’s quite a study to see her walk, and sit down, and stand up, and hold her head even. I don’t care if she was trained for the stage, and I expect she will be a great artist some day. She gave me the address of her tailor, and I mean to get a grey cloth like hers, only with gold braiding on it, the very first thing.”

This was the summing-up of the younger portion of society, led by Mrs. Austin, who threw herself into this new friendship with her usual headlong energy. The older ladies were more reserved in their approaches, and were not quite sure that they liked their girls to be so much with a young person who had been an actress—or very nearly one. But this opposition only warmed up Mrs. Austin into more decided partisanship. Only one thing puzzled her in her new friend. When the name of the admired globe-trotter friend turned up (as it did at intervals of five minutes on an average in Lizzie’s conversation at this period), Alice Lauder had a way of turning her head away and looking decidedly