pressure of the shelving sides. And if our heroine be somewhat
rudely tossed from one boulder to another, if we fail wholly to
understand her emotions and her acts, we must blame the canon. She had,
indeed, little time to think.

One evening, three weeks or so after the conversation with Ethel Wing
just related, Honora's husband entered her room as her maid was giving
the finishing touches to her toilet.

"You're not going to wear that dress!" he exclaimed.

"Why not?" she asked, without turning from the mirror.

He lighted a cigarette.

"I thought you'd put on something handsome--to go to the Graingers'. And
where are your jewels? You'll find the women there loaded with 'em."

"One string of pearls is all I care to wear," said Honora--a reply with
which he was fain to be content until they were in the carriage, when
she added: "Howard, I must ask you as a favour not to talk that way
before the servants."

"What way?" he demanded.

"Oh," she exclaimed, "if you don't know I suppose it is impossible to
explain. You wouldn't understand."

"I understand one thing, Honora, that you're too confoundedly clever for
me," he declared.

Honora did not reply. For at that moment they drew up at a carpet
stretched across the pavement.

Unlike the mansions of vast and imposing facades that were beginning
everywhere to catch the eye on Fifth Avenue, and that followed mostly
the continental styles of architecture, the house of the Cecil Graingers
had a substantial, "middle of-the-eighties" appearance. It stood on a
corner, with a high iron fence protecting the area around it. Within, it
gave one an idea of space that the exterior strangely belied; and it was
furnished, not in a French, but in what might be called a comfortably
English, manner. It was filled, Honora saw, with handsome and priceless
things which did not immediately and aggressively strike the eye, but
which somehow gave the impression of having always been there. What
struck her, as she sat in the little withdrawing room while the maid
removed her overshoes, was the note of permanence.

Some of those who were present at Mrs. Grainger's that evening
remember her entrance into the drawing-room. Her gown, the colour of a
rose-tinted cloud, set off the exceeding whiteness of her neck and
arms and vied with the crimson in her cheeks, and the single glistening
string of pearls about the slender column of her neck served as a
contrast to the shadowy masses of her