No!  Her cause was just; but it was too startling—­that was what was the matter with it.

Then she told herself she would write to Lionel Belmont.  She would write a letter that night.

At nine-thirty she was off duty.  She went upstairs to her perch in the roof, and sat on her bed for over two hours.  Then she came down again to the bureau with some bluish note-paper and envelopes in her hand, and, in response to the surprised question of the pink-frocked colleague who had taken her place, she explained that she wanted to write a letter.

‘You do look that bad, Miss Malpas,’ said the other girl, who made a speciality of compassion.

‘Do I?’ said Nina.

‘Yes, you do.  What have you got on, now, my poor dear?’

’What’s that to you?  I’ll thank you to mind your own business, Miss Bella Perkins.’

Usually Nina was not soon ruffled; but that night all her nerves were exasperated and exceedingly sensitive.

‘Oh!’ said the girl.  ’What price the Duchess of Doncaster?  And I was just going to wish you a nice day to-morrow for your holiday, too.’

Nina seated herself at the table to write the letter.  An electric light burned directly over her frizzy head.  She wrote a weak but legible and regular back-hand.  She hated writing letters, partly because she was dubious about her spelling, and partly because of an obscure but irrepressible suspicion that her letters were of necessity silly.  She pondered for a long time, and then wrote:  ’Dear Mr. Belmont,—­I venture——­’ She made a new start:  ’Dear Sir,—­I hope you will not think me——­’ And a third attempt:  ‘My dear Father——­’ No! it was preposterous.  It could no more be written than it could be said.

The situation was too much for simple Nina.

Suddenly the grand circular hall of the Majestic was filled with a clamour at once charming and fantastic.  There was chattering of musical, gay American voices, pattering of elegant feet on the tessellated pavement, the unique incomparable sound of the frou-frou of many frocks; and above all this the rich tones of Mr. Lionel Belmont.  Nina looked up and saw her radiant father the centre of a group of girls all young, all beautiful, all stylish, all with picture hats, all self-possessed, all sparkling, doubtless the recipients of the dandy supper.

Oh, how insignificant and homicidal Nina felt!

‘Thirteen of you!’ exclaimed Lionel Belmont, pulling his superb moustache.  ’Two to a hansom.  I guess I’ll want six and a half hansoms, boy.’

There was an explosion of delicious laughter, and the page-boy grinned, ran off, and began whistling in the portico like a vexed locomotive.  The thirteen fair, shepherded by Lionel Belmont, passed out into the murmurous summer night of the Strand.  Cab after cab drove up, and Nina saw that her father, after filling each cab, paid each cabman.  In three minutes the dream-like scene was over.  Mr. Belmont re-entered the hotel, winked humorously at the occupant of the pagoda, ignored the bureau, and departed to his rooms.