again.

"Oh, you needn't shake your head, my dear," resumed Lady Earlscourt.
"I've known of such judgments falling on girls before now--yes, when the
Dissenters were well off. But no Dissenter rides straight to hounds."

Phyllis laughed.

"More logic," she said, and shook hands with her friend.

"That girl has another man in her eye," said her friend sagaciously,
when Phyllis had left her opposite her own tea-table. "But I don't
despair; if we can only persuade our bishop to prosecute George Holland,
she may return to him all right."

She invariably referred to the bishop as if he were a member of the
Earlscourt household; but it was understood that the bishop had never
actually accepted the responsibilities incidental to such a position;
though he had his views on the subject of Lady Earlscourt's cook.

This interview had taken place a week before the dinner party for which
Phyllis was carefully dressed by her maid Fidele while Herbert Courtland
was walking away from the house. In spite of her logic, Lady Earlscourt
now and again stumbled across the truth. When it occurred to her that
Phyllis had another man in her eye,--the phrase was Lady Earlscourt's
and it served very well to express her meaning,--she had made some
careful inquiries on the subject of the girl's male visitors, and she
had, of course, found out that no other man occupied that enviable
position; no social oculist would be required to remove the element
which, in Lady Earlscourt's estimation, caused Phyllis' vision to be
distorted.

George Holland was at the dinner. Phyllis had been asked very quietly by
the hostess if she would mind being taken in by George Holland; if she
had the least feeling on the matter, Sir Lionel Greatorex would not mind
taking her instead of Mrs. Vernon-Brooke. But Phyllis had said that of
course she would be delighted to sit beside Mr. Holland. Mr. Holland was
one of her best friends.

"Is his case so hopeless as that?" said Lady Earlscourt, in a low voice,
and Phyllis smiled in response--the smile of the guest when the hostess
had made a point.

When Lady Earlscourt had indiscreetly, but confidentially, explained to
some of her guests the previous week that she meant her little dinner
party to be the means of reuniting Mr. Holland and Miss Ayrton, one of
them--he was a man--smiled and said, when she had gone away, that she
was a singularly unobservant woman, or she would have known that the
best way of bringing t