be scarcely considered hints at all. She scarcely dared speak to
their smart young footman who she knew had only taken the place
in the slice of a house because he had been told that it might be
an opening to better things. She did not know the exact summing
up at the agency had been as follows:

"They're a good looking pair and he's Lord Lawdor's nephew.
They're bound to have their fling and smart people will come to
their house because she's so pretty. They'll last two or three
years perhaps and you'll open the door to the kind of people who
remember a well set-up young fellow if he shows he knows his work
above the usual."

The more men of the class of the Head of the House of Coombe who
came in and out of the slice of a house the more likely the owners
of it were to get good invitations and continued credit, Feather
was aware. Besides which, she thought ingenuously, if he was rich
he would no doubt lend Bob money. She had already known that certain
men who liked her had done it. She did not mind it at all. One
was obliged to have money.

This was the beginning of an acquaintance which gave rise to much
argument over tea-cups and at dinner parties and in boudoirs--even
in corners of Feather's own gaudy little drawing-room. The argument
regarded the degree of Coombe's interest in her. There was always
curiosity as to the degree of his interest in any woman--especially
and privately on the part of the woman herself. Casual and shallow
observers said he was quite infatuated if such a thing were possible
to a man of his temperament; the more concentrated of mind said it
was not possible to a man of his temperament and that any attraction