tered over their wraps in the hall below, she said: "I don't
think I'll go on to this musicale with you, Olive. I'm tired. I think
I'll just have Parkson call me a cab and go home."

"_Now_ ... I _do_ feel a wretch!" Mrs. Arundel exclaimed, turning on her
a reproachful face. "It's those horrid things I repeated to you, of
course!"

She caught both Sophy's hands in hers.

"_Don't_ make me feel a pig by not going, there's a _darling_," she
pleaded. "Don't, _don't_ be _morbid_!"

"I'm not morbid-- I'm really tired," said Sophy, looking down at the tip
of her shoe and moving it softly on the carpet, in that way she had when
deeply troubled or very angry.

"And if you _will_ go home, don't talk about having a _cab_. I'll send
you in Jack's brougham. It's _beastly_ of Cecil not giving you a
carriage!"

"He says we can't afford it."

"Then Gerald ought to give you one. The Wychcotes simply _stink_ of
money!"

Sophy smiled faintly. She could never get used to hearing such words
come so simply from pretty lips. Her black "Mammy" had once washed her
little tongue with soap for saying "stink."

"I know," she said; "but Gerald gives Cecil an allowance as it is."

Olive opened her hyacinth-blue eyes frankly.

"But Cecil had quite a fortune of his own! How does that happen?"

"I don't know," said Sophy tiredly. Money did not interest her. She had
a thousand dollars a year from her father's estate. That gave her a rich
feeling of independence. She loved to feel that her clothes, even her
underlinen and shoes and stockings, were bought with her own money. She
did not know how much it was that Gerald Wychcote allowed his younger
brother. She had never asked. But she knew that the house in Regent's
Park belonged to Gerald and that he let them have it for a nominal rent.

"I think it's a shame!" said Olive. "I suppose he made ducks and drakes
of it with that exploring fad, and travelling in India and such places.
Such _nonsense_!"

Then she took Sophy's hand again.

"_Do_ come!" she coaxed. "There's a perfect _dear_ of a man I want you
so much to meet. A friend of Varesca's--a Lombard nobleman, the Marchese
Amaldi. Italians are perfectly _enchanting_. Don't you think so?-- I am
like Lord Carlisle ... '_Italianissimo_'!"

Sophy smiled vaguely, remembering when Olive had been Austrianissimo and
Irishissimo and Frenchissimo.

"Does that smile mean you're coming? Ah, _do_! Marco Amaldi is the most
heavenly man I ever kne