was high-pitched
and nasal, and a little too loud in company. They were as pretty as
girls are anywhere, and they wore dresses designed by Mr. Worth, or his
New York rivals, Loque and Chiffon; but they occasionally looked across
the room with candid and intelligent envy at maidens of less
pretensions, who were better dressed by the local artists.

Farnham was stopped at some distance from the pretty group by a buxom
woman standing near the open window, cooling the vast spread of her
bare shoulders in a current of air, which she assisted in its office
with a red-and-gold Japanese fan.

"Captain Farnham," she said, "when are you going to give that
lawn-tennis party you promised so long ago? My character for veracity
depends on it. I have told everybody it would be soon, and I shall be
disgraced if it is delayed much longer."

"That is the common lot of prophets, Mrs. Adipson," replied Farnham.
"You know they say in Wall Street that early and exclusive information
will ruin any man. But tell me, how is your club getting on?" he
continued disingenuously, for he had not the slightest interest in the
club; but he knew that once fairly started on the subject, Mrs. Adipson
would talk indefinitely, and he might stand there and torture his heart
and delight his eyes with the beauty of Alice Belding.

He carried his abstraction a little too far, however, for the good lady
soon perceived, from his wandering looks and vague replies, that she
was not holding his attention. So she pettishly released him after
following the direction of his eyes, and said, "There, I see you are
crazy to go and talk to Miss Dallas. I won't detain you. She _is_
awfully clever, I suppose, though she never took the trouble to be
brilliant in my presence; and she is pretty when she wears her hair
that way--I never liked those frizzes."

Farnham accepted his release with perhaps a little more gratitude than
courtesy, and moved away to take a seat which had just been vacated
beside Miss Dallas. He was filled with a boyish delight in Mrs.
Adipson's error. "That she should think I was worshipping Miss Dallas
from afar! Where do women keep their eyes? To think that anybody should
look at Miss Dallas when Alice Belding was sitting beside her." It was
pleasant to think, however, that the secret of his unhappy love was
safe. Nobody was gossiping about it, and using the name of his beloved
in idle conjectures. That was as it should be. His love was sacred from