But about one point she was determined. She would think and act for
herself in future. Aunt Clara's frown should not prohibit any book or
any action. The world should teach her what it could.

Tamara had received a solid education; now she would profit by it, and
instead of letting all her knowledge lie like a bulb in a root-house,
she would plant it and tend it, and would hope to see sweet flowers
springing forth.

"Next summer I shall be twenty-five years old," she said to herself,
"and the whole thing has been a waste."

Each time the energetic promenaders passed her chair she heard a few
words of their conversation, on hunting often, and the dogs, and the
children, Bertie's cleverness, and Muriel's chickenpox, but always the
Prince seemed interested and polite.

Presently the old man, Stephen Strong, came up and took Mrs.
Hardcastle's chair.

"May I disturb your meditations?" he said. "You look so wise."

"No, I am foolish," Tamara answered. "Now you who know the world must
come and talk and teach me its meaning."

He was rather a wonderful old man, Stephen Strong, purely English to
look at, and purely cosmopolitan in habits and life. He had been in the
diplomatic service years ago, and had been in Egypt in the gorgeous
Ismail time; then a fortune came his way, and he traveled the earth
over. There were years spent in Vienna and Petersburg and Paris, and
always the early winter back in the land of the Sphinx.