They were once plentiful, and now they are so scarce," she broke off with a sigh of resignation which seemed to accept every fact of experience except the fact of age.

"It was a hard life, but it was life, after all.

One is not put here to be contented, or one would dread death too much for the purpose of God." In spite of her uncompromising materialism, she was not without an ineradicable streak of superstition which she would probably have called piety.
"I am ready to begin at once--to-morrow," said Gabriella, and she added without explanation, obeying, perhaps, an intuitive feeling that to explain a statement is to weaken it, "and I should like to be called by my maiden name while I am here--just Mrs.Carr, if you don't mind." To this request Madame agreed with effusion, if not with sincerity.

For her own part she would have preferred to speak of her saleswoman as young Mrs.Fowler; but she reflected comfortably that many of her patrons would know young Mrs.Fowler by sight at least, and to the others she might conveniently drop a word or two in due season.

To drop a word or two would provide entertainment throughout the length of a fitting; and, for the rest, the mystery of the situation had its charm for the romantic Irish strain in her blood.