and unusually boyish; also that he was falling hopelessly in love with Mrs. Villiers. Mrs. Lawrence was not surprised. She herself had fallen in love with little Mrs. Villiers. The child was only two and twenty she discovered, and such a dear baby at that. It was impossible to realise that this fresh, girlish creature had experienced not only a woman's tragedy, in a wretched marriage, but also the humiliation and pain of the only escape the law provides. Hers Mrs. Lawrence reflected, was one of the rare temperaments over which evil has no power—the radiant joyous child-nature for which every day the world is newly created, and yesterday has no existence.
Only once had she ever mentioned her husband's name to Mrs. Lawrence, and on that occasion the elder woman had smiled tenderly over the sweet naivete of her little friend.
It was while they were walking together in the Boboli Gardens one warm afternoon in February, that Mrs. Villiers met an acquaintance. Mrs. Lawrence had already noticed this woman as she came towards them down one of the long tunnel-like avenues, and noticed her with disapproval. Showily dressed, obviously painted, walking with an exaggeration of the fashionable gait of the moment, her fastidious judgment had instantly affixed to her the label "bad style." It was therefore with a shock, the reverse of pleasant, that she found such an individual stridently claiming acquaintance with her little companion. Mrs. Lawrence walked on, and in a few moments Mrs. Villiers overtook her, a pink flush of annoy-
