"Evelyn," said Jean, "and invariably her own subjects too."
It seems that this girl was not always fencing.
She controlled the collecting of rents and practically managed the domestic matters in three streets of tenements of new buildings recently erected in a working part of London. She was also engaged to be married.
"Doesn't this sort of independent life unsettle you for a quiet one?" she was often asked by her friends.
"And it's quite different," she would explain. "Knowing the stress and the difficulties of this side of it make me long for that little haven of a home we are getting ready at Richmond. I would bury myself there for ever, from a selfish point of view that is, and probably vegetate like the others. But I've made a pledge never to forget--never to forget what I've seen in London, and never to stop working for it somewhere or somehow."
"What about your poor husband?" asked Jean.
"He isn't poor," said the fencing girl with a grin. "He is getting quite rich. He fell in love with me at the tenements. He built them. I should think he would divorce me if I turned narrow-minded."
She gazed in a searching way at Elsie.
"You have the makings of a somebody," she said gravely, "more than these two, though they are perfectly charming."
"I want to go to the Balkans," said Elsie. She turned to Mabel. "Cousin Arthur declared he really would take me."