the art, invaluable in a woman who meant to go far in the line she had
chosen, of not seeming to have done anything, or of not caring whether
people liked it or not. Verrian asked himself, as he watched her
twittering back at those girls, and shedding equally their thanks and
praises from her impermeable plumage, how she would have behaved if Miss
Shirley's attempt had been an entire failure. He decided that she would
have ignored the failure with the same impersonality as that with which
she now ignored the success. It appeared that in one point he did her
injustice, for when he went up to dress for dinner after the long stroll
he took towards night he found a note under his door, by which he must
infer that Mrs. Westangle had not kept the real facts of her triumph from
the mistress of the revels.

"DEAR MR. VERRIAN, I am not likely to see you, but I must
thank you.
"M. SHIRLEY.

"P. S. Don't try to answer, please."

Verrian liked, the note, he even liked the impulse which had dictated it,
and he understood the impulse; but he did not like getting the note. If
Miss Shirley meant business in taking up the line of life she had
professed to have entered upon seriously, she had better, in the case of
a young man whose acquaintance she had chanced to make, let her gratitude
wait. But when did a woman ever mean business, except in the one great
business?