CHAPTER I

IN the outer office of the Maggersfont Diamond Company the handful of clerks worked steadily on with that ease and smoothness that always characterises a perfectly organised and smoothly running business. They were lady typists, for the most part, under the able supervision of a forewoman, and because they both admired and respected their employer, Sir Samuel Oscar, there was very little slacking in Bishopsgate-street. Because Sir Samuel was not only a great man and a South African magnate of the first importance, but a most kindly and considerate employer besides. Though when he spoke or directed then everybody under him knew that he meant exactly what he said.

An inner room leading out of the clerks’ apartment was devoted to the requirements of the great man’s personal secretary, and her name–Miss Stella Ravenhill–appeared in black letters on the ground glass in the upper part of the door. Rather an unusual development, perhaps, in a city office, but then Stella Ravenhill stood, more or less, in a class of her own, and it was a peculiar psychological fact that, though she had been in the employ of her firm for less than three years, she had gone easily and smoothly over the heads of the other lady clerks, and, strangely enough, there was not one of them who resented her presence or was in the least disposed to question her authority.

Perhaps they liked her all the better because they recognised from the first that she was a lady. Not that the rest failed to claim an equal distinction, but then there was a difference, and they all had admitted it from the first moment when Stella Ravenhill came in all her calm beauty and serene assurance, to say nothing of her undoubted ability, and at once took her place which Nature had ordained for her from the moment of her birth.

And now she was Sir Samuel’s confidential secretary. She took down his letters in shorthand and very frequently typed them herself. Nobody knew who she was or where she came from, though there were legends in the office as to her high birth and station, and as to what position in society she had occupied before the force of circumstances had compelled her to get her own living. She took no share in the simple pleasure and amusements of the rest, and yet she had always a word of sympathy for such of the girls who chose to confide their troubles to her, and very frequently her purse was at their disp