Weguelin St. Michael, with deepened severity.

Though I understood quite well, without this emphasizing, that the
little lady would, with her unbending traditions, probably think it more
respectable to approach Kings Port in a wheelbarrow, I was absorbed
by the vague but copious import of Mrs. Gregory's announcement. The
oracles, moreover, continued.

"But she is undoubtedly very clever to come and see for herself," was
Mrs. Weguelin's next comment.

Mrs. Gregory's face, as she replied to her companion, took on a
censorious and superior expression. "You'll remember, Julia, that I told
Josephine St. Michael it was what they had to expect."

"But it was not Josephine, my dear, who at any time approved of taking
such a course. It was Eliza's whole doing."

It was fairly raining oracles round me, and they quite resembled, for
all the help and light they contained, their Delphic predecessors.

"And yet Eliza," said Mrs. Gregory, "in the face of it, this very
morning, repeated her eternal assertion that we shall all see the
marriage will not take place."

"Eliza," murmured Mrs. Weguelin, "rates few things more highly than her
own judgment."

Mrs. Gregory mused. "Yet she is often right when she has no right to be
right."

I could not bear it any longer, and I said, "I heard to-day that Miss
Rieppe had broken her engagement."

"And where did you hear that nonsense?" asked Mrs. Gregory.

My heart leaped, and I told her where.

"Oh, well! you will hear anything in a boarding-house. Indeed, that
would be a great deal too good to be true."

"May I ask where Miss Rieppe is all this while?"

"The last news was from Palm Beach, where the air was said to be
necessary for the General."

"But," Mrs. Weguelin repeated, "we have every reason to believe that she
is coming here in an automobile."

"We shall have to call, of course," added Mrs. Gregory to her, not to
me; they were leaving me out of it. Yes, these ladies were forgetting
about me in their using preoccupation over whatever crisis it was that
now hung over John Mayrant's love affairs--a preoccupation which was
evidently part of Kings Port's universal buzz to-day, and which my
joining them in the street had merely mitigated for a moment. I did
not wish to be left out of it; I cannot tell you why--perhaps it was
contagious in the local air--but a veritable madness of craving to know
about it seized upon me. Of course, I saw that Miss Rieppe was, almost
too gros