Just for a moment Mary felt inclined to disclose her identity. It warmed her heart and brought tears to her eyes to hear this kind of voice from the past. The wound of separation was too recent for Mary not to feel it keenly. The woman's face was so familiar, too; it reminded the girl oddly of somebody else, somebody that she did not like, but to whom for the moment she could not give a name.

Then Mary's pride came back to her and the natural impulse to confide in the woman was crushed down.

"I suppose I made a mistake," she said. "After all, it is not an uncommon thing to find chance likenesses to your friends in other people. You must find London a great change after being brought up in the country."

The woman sighed deeply and a look of pain came into her eyes. It was evident that she had felt the change far more cruelly than Mary had imagined. The girl longed to ask further questions, but she restrained her curiosity. Nor could Connie Colam throw any light on the subject after she returned. She knew very little about Mrs. Speed, except that she was a widow with a grown-up son, who had been a great trouble to her. The son appeared occasionally, and Mrs. Speed always seemed to be in deep distress afterwards. Mary was still debating the matter in her mind at bedtime. After breakfast the following morning there were more important matters to occupy her attention.

"Now you are going to show me what you can do," Connie said cheerfully. "I take it that you have come up here with a view to getting your own living. If you have any money----"

"You may get that idea out of your mind altogether," Mary smiled. "I have a very few pounds to keep me going for the present, and a little jewellery to fall back upon. I have not been used to this kind of life, and I shall probably find it trying at first. But I am going to succeed. We have lost our position socially and financially, and I would not be beholden to those who have taken our place. I need not say more than that."

"That is just as you please," Connie said somewhat coldly. "I see you are terribly proud and reserved, but you will grow out of that. And I like your face. But please don't make up your mind that it is a very easy thing for a girl to get her living in London. When you come to know the inside of a pawnshop, and share the last sixpence with a friend, you will be all the sweeter and better for it. Now show me your work."

Not without some pardonable pride, Mary displayed her drawings. There were pretty landscapes in water colours, studies of groups of flowers in oils, and the like, all the conventional kind of stuff that girls produce at finishing schools under the eye of some discreet and clever master. But they did not seem to impress Connie, who handled them with some contempt. Mary's sensitive face flushed.

"You do not seem to care for them," she said with a challenge in her voice.

"Oh, it isn't that," Connie replied. "It's the uselessness of the things. I daresay that a good many of your friends have seriously advised you take up art as a career."

"Two or three people," Mary protested, "who are in a position to judge."

"Oh, I know all about that," Connie said without ceremony. "It was just the same with me in the happy days. My dear Mary, that pretty, pretty stuff of yours is all very well to bring you in flattery from bazaar managers, but the milk-stool school of art is no good when you get into the market. Painters, real painters, mind, not daubers like us, find colour work dreadfully hard to sell. There isn't a dealer who would give you five shillings for what you have there. Could you do work like mine, for instance?"

"I'm afraid that I should not care to attempt it," Mary said coldly.

"There you go! Too vulgar for you, of course! You would never get the price of your lodgings out of your class of work, believe me. I know, because I tried it myself. But you will need to have your lesson like the rest of us, and I will give you the names of a few of the most likely dealers in London. You start off directly after breakfast and go the round of them. I shan't be back to luncheon because I've got an hour or two on one of the evening papers getting out sketches of a fashion plate for a lady's page."

Mary grasped eagerly at the suggestion. She wanted to prove that Connie was wrong. With her head high and heart full of hope, she set off presently.

On the whole, it was a morning to be remembered. It was hot and stuffy, and Mary was not accustomed to the blistering, trying heat of London pavements. She was tired and worn out and her head ached terribly by the time she got back. Nor was there any difference in the weight and contents of her portfolio.

Alas, for the blood of............