ave availed. When she came back to her own country, it was
without more than the hope that some society people, whom she had met
abroad, might remember her.

"You'll see the greatest lot of frumps, if they ever do come," Charmian
said to Cornelia, after her stepmother had made her excuses to Cornelia
for her friends being rather late, "and I don't think they're half as
uncertain to come as mamma does. Anyway, they're certain to stay, after
they get here, till you want to rise up and howl."

"My dear!" said Mrs. Maybough.

"Oh, I don't suppose I ever _shall_ howl. I'm too thoroughly subdued;
and with Cornelia here to-day I shall be able to hold in. You're the
first Synthesis girl," she frankly explained to Cornelia, "that mamma's
ever let me have. She thinks they spend all their time drawing the
nude."

Mrs. Maybough looked at Cornelia for the effect of this boldness upon
her, and the girl frowned to keep herself from laughing, and then gave
way. Mrs. Maybough smiled with a ladylike decorum which redeemed the
excess from impropriety. Charmian seemed to know the bounds of her
license, and as if Mrs. Maybough's smile had marked them, she went no
farther, and her mother began softly to question Cornelia about
herself. The girl perceived that Charmian had not told her anything
quite right concerning her, but had got everything dramatically and
picturesquely awry. She tried to keep Cornelia from setting the facts
straight, because it took all the romance out of them, and she said she
should always believe them as she had reported them. Cornelia knew from
novels that they were very humble facts, but she was prepared to abide
by them whatever a great society woman like Mrs. Maybough should think
of them. Mrs. Maybough seemed to think none the worse of them in the
simple angularity which Cornelia gave them.

Her friends began to come in at last, and Cornelia found herself, for
the first time, in a company of those modern nomads whom prosperity and
the various forms of indigestion have multiplied among us. They were
mostly people whom Mrs. Maybough had met in Europe, drinking different
waters and sampling divers climates, and they had lately arrived home,
or were just going abroad, or to Florida, or Colorado, or California.
The men were not so sick as the women, but they were prosperous, and
that was as good or as bad a reason for their homelessness. They
gradually withdrew from the ladies, and stirred their tea in groups of