Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Alicia Drake—a vision of pale pink—had just appeared in the long gallery at Tallyn, on her way to dinner. Her dress, her jewels, and all her minor appointments were of that quality and perfection to which only much thought and plentiful money can attain. She had not in fact been romancing in that account of her afternoon which has been already quoted. Dress was her weapon, and her stock in trade; it was, she said, necessary to her 'career.' And on this plea she steadily exacted in its support a proportion of the family income which left but small pickings for the schooling of her younger brothers, and the allowances of her two younger sisters. But so great were the indulgence and the pride of her parents,—small Devonshire landowners living on an impoverished estate,—that Alicia's demands were conceded without a murmur. They themselves were insignificant folk, who had, in their own opinion, failed in life; and most of their children seemed to them to possess the same ineffective qualities—or the same absence of qualities—as themselves. But Alicia represented their one chance of something brilliant and interesting, something to lift them above their neighbours, and break up the monotony of their later lives. Their devotion was a strange mixture of love and selfishness; at any rate, Alicia could always feel, and did always feel, that she was playing her family's game as well as her own. Her own game of course came first. She was not a beauty, in the sense in which Diana Mallory was a beauty; and of that fact she had been perfectly aware after bcr first, apparently careless glance at the new comer of the afternoon. But she had points that never failed to attract notice; a free and rather insolent carriage, audaciously beautiful eyes, a general roundness and softness,... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.