od heavens, no! I wish all our fellows were as fit as I am.
And--'

'Yes?' she said.

'Don't pity me, dear friend. I don't think it's good for me. The world
really uses me very well.'

'Then it's all right, I suppose,' Madeline said, with sudden depression.

'Of course it is. You are dining with us on the eighth?'

'I'm afraid not, I'm engaged.'

'Engaged again? Don't you WANT to break bread in my house, Miss
Anderson?' She was silent, and he insisted, 'Tell me,' he said.

She gave him instead a kind, mysterious smile.

'I will explain to you what I feel about that some day,' she said;
'some day soon. I can't accept Mrs. Innes's invitation for the eighth,
but--Brookes and I are going to take tea with the fakir's monkeys on the
top of Jakko tomorrow afternoon.'

'Anybody else, or only Brookes?'

'Only Brookes.' And she thought she had abandoned coquetry!

'Then may I come?'

'Indeed you may.'

'I really don't know,' reflected Madeline, as she caught another glimpse
of Mrs. Innes vigorously dancing the reel opposite little Lord Billy in
his Highland uniform, with her hands on her flowered-satin hips, 'that I
am behaving very well myself.'

Chapter 3.VIII.

Horace Innes looked round his wife's drawing-room as if he were making
an inventory of it, carefully giving each article its value, which
happened, however, to have nothing to do with rupees. Madeline Anderson
had been saying something the day before about the intimacy and accuracy
with which people's walls expressed them, and though the commonplace was
not new to him, this was the first time it had ever led him to scan his
wife's. What he saw may be imagined, but his only distinct reflection
was that he had no idea that she had been photographed so variously or
had so many friends who wore resplendent Staff uniforms. The relation of
cheapness in porcelain ornaments to the lady's individuality was beyond
him, and he could not analyze his feelings of sitting in the midst of
her poverty of spirit. Indeed, thinking of his ordinary unsusceptibility
to such things, he told himself sharply that he was adding an
affectation of discomfort to the others that he had to bear; and that
if Madeline had not given him the idea it would never have entered his
mind. The less, he mused, that one had to do with finicking feelings
in this world the better. They were well enough for people who were
tolerably conditioned in essentials--he preferred this vagueness, even