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266 "What a trivial thing will produce happiness," he said, abruptly.

"Really?" queried the Professor, quizzically. "Has your meeting with Miss Drummond, then, made you a happy man?"

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of myself, but of her. That girl, for the first time in her life, gets her foot on the ladder of success, and it's all been done for a paltry ten-pound note."

"Two fives, to be accurate," corrected the Professor, with some indefinite inflection of dissatisfaction in his voice that made Stranleigh look quickly at him.

"I predict," continued Tom Pitts, "that Lord Stranleigh will take an interest in her work, and will probably engage a gallery in Bond Street and finance an exhibition of her water-colours."

"I have not the slightest doubt of it," commented Marlow. "She is an exceedingly pretty girl."

"Pretty? Is she?"

"Isn't she?"

"I—I really hadn't noticed. I'm very sorry if that is the case."

"Why?"

"Because it will interfere with her work. That's just the trouble about a pretty woman. She marries some inane individual, and whatever talent she possesses becomes merged in domesticity. It annoys me to learn that she is pretty."