right; there's no obligation; though people in general can't take their
eyes off me."

"I see that at this moment," I replied. "But what does it matter where
or how, for the present, she lives? She'll marry infallibly, marry
early, and everything then will change."

"Whom will she marry?" my companion gloomily asked.

"Any one she likes. She's so abnormally pretty that she can do anything.
She'll fascinate some nabob or some prince."

"She'll fascinate him first and bore him afterwards. Moreover she's not
so pretty as you make her out; she hasn't a scrap of a figure."

"No doubt, but one doesn't in the least miss it."

"Not now," said Mrs. Meldrum, "but one will when she's older and when
everything will have to count."

"When she's older she'll count as a princess, so it won't matter."

"She has other drawbacks," my companion went on. "Those wonderful eyes
are good for nothing but to roll about like sugar-balls--which they
greatly resemble--in a child's mouth. She can't use them."

"Use them? Why, she does nothing else."

"To make fools of young men, but not to read or write, not to do any sort
of work. She never opens a book, and her maid writes her notes. You'll