you and the duke than
you deserve. Miss Leyburn does not care for me, and she does care--or I
am very much mistaken--for somebody else.'

He pronounced the words deliberately, watching their effect upon her.

'What, that Oxford nonentity, Mr. Langham, the Elsmeres' friend?
Ridiculous! What attraction could a man of that type have for a girl of
hers?'

'I am not bound to supply an answer to that question,' replied her
nephew. 'However, he is not a nonentity. Far from it! Ten years ago,
when I was leaving Cambridge, he was certainly one of the most
distinguished of the young Oxford tutors.

'Another instance of what university reputation is worth!' said Lady
Charlotte scornfully. It was clear that even in the case of a beauty
whom she thought it beneath him to marry, she was not pleased to see her
nephew ousted by the _force majeure_ of a rival--and that a rival whom
she regarded as an utter nobody, having neither marketable eccentricity,
nor family, nor social brilliance to recommend him.

Flaxman understood her perplexity and watched her with critical amused
eyes.

'I should like to know,' he said presently, with a curious slowness and
suavity, 'I should greatly like to know why you asked him here
to-night?'

'You know perfectly well that I should ask anybody--a convict, a
crossing-sweeper--if I happened to be half an hour in the same room with
him!'

Flaxman laughed.

'Well, it may be convenient to-night,' he said reflectively. 'What are
we to do--some thought-reading?'

'Yes. It isn't a crush. I have only asked about thirty or forty people.
Mr. Denman is to manage it.'

She mentioned an amateur thought-reader greatly in request at the
moment.

Flaxman cogitated for a while and then propounded a little plan to his
aunt, to which she, after some demur, agreed.

'I want to make a few notes,' he said drily, when it was arranged; 'I
should be glad to satisfy myself.'

When the Misses Leyburn were announced, Rose, though the younger, came
in first. She always took the lead by a sort of natural right, and
Agnes never dreamt of protesting. To-night the sisters were in white.
Some soft creamy stuff was folded and draped about Rose's slim shapely
figure in such a way as to bring out all its charming roundness and
grace. Her neck and arms bore the challenge of the dress victoriously.
Her red-gold hair gleamed in the light of Lady Charlotte's innumerable
candles. A knot of dusky blue feathers on her shoulder,