a red headed laird sent me last Christmas. Excellent! Of
course you can walk! Isn't every other woman in the hotel well aware
how you got that lovely figure? Yes, in that chair. And here is the
shawl. It's just like being cuddled by a woolly lamb."

Mrs. de la Vere turned the keys in two doors. "Reggie always knocks,"
she explained; "but some inquisitive cat may follow me here, and I am
sure you don't wish to be gushed over now, after everybody has been so
horrid to you."

"You were not," said Helen gratefully.

"Yes, I was, in a way. I hate most women; but I admired you ever since
you took the conceit out of that giddy husband of mine. If I didn't
speak, it arose from sheer laziness--a sort of drifting with the
stream, in tow of the General and that old mischief maker, Mrs.
Vavasour. I'm sorry, and you will be quite justified to-morrow morning
in sailing past me and the rest as though we were beetles."

Then Helen laughed, feebly, it is true, but with a genuine mirth that
chased away momentarily the evergrowing memory of Millicent's
injustice. "Why do you mention beetles?" she asked. "It is part of my
every day work to classify them."

Mrs. de la Vere was puzzled. "I believe you have said something very
cutting," she cried. "If you did, we deserve it. But please tell me
the joke. I shall hand it on to the Wraggs."

"There is no joke. I act as secretary to a German professor of
entomology--insects, you know; he makes beetles a specialty."

The other woman's eye danced. "It is all very funny," she said, "and
I still have my doubts. Never mind. I want to atone for earlier
shortcomings. I felt that someone really ought to tell you what took
place in the outer foyer after you sank gracefully out of the act. Mr.
Bower----"

A tap on the door leading into the corridor interrupted her. It was
Marie, armed with chicken broth and dry toast. Mrs. de la Vere, who
seemed to be filled with an honest anxiety to place Helen at her ease,
persuaded her to begin sipping the compound.

"Well, what did Mr. Bower do?" demanded Helen, who was wondering now
why she had fainted. The accusation brought against her by Millicent
Jaques was untrue. Why should it disturb her so gravely? It did not
occur to her that the true cause was physical,--a too sudden change of
temperature.

"He sat on that young woman from the Wellington Theater very severely,
I assure you. From her manner we all imagined she had some sort of
claim on him; but i