so good of you to come. How do
you do, Mrs. Cameron, it was so good of you to come. How do you do,
Mrs. Coulson, etc., etc."

A wild desire for laughter with which Elizabeth was struggling was
quenched by a feeling of pity. She wondered how many hundred times
poor Estella had said those words during that long hot afternoon, and
wondered how long she herself could stand there in that awful heat and
repeat them in that parrot-fashion, ere the wild streak would assert
itself and send her flying out of doors. Estella was made of wonderful
stuff, she reflected, admiringly. Mrs. Raymond had succumbed long ago
and stood drooping and perspiring, scarcely able to speak, and quite
unable to smile.

Elizabeth felt queer and strange when Estella shook her two fingers
just as she shook everyone else's and with the same smile made the same
remark to her. She tried to say something to bring back her old
schoolmate, but Estella turned to the next person and she found herself
shoved on. And shoved on she was from that time forth, conscious only
of heat and noise and fag and a desire to get away.

She found herself at last, after having been shoved into the
dining-room for ice-cream, and shoved out again, packed into a corner
behind Annie. The latter had been pinioned by a fat lady who, for the
last quarter of an hour, had been shouting above the din a minutely
detailed account of a surgical operation through which she had lately
come, omitting not one jot of her sufferings. Elizabeth felt faint.
The rich sweetmeats of the tea-table, the heat, the noise, and the
lady's harrowing tale, were rendering her almost ill. She looked about
her desperately. Just behind her was a French window. It was open,
but the heavy lace-bordered blind was drawn down to within a couple of
feet from the floor. All unmindful of the conventionalities, Elizabeth
stooped and peeped out. The breath of fresh air revived her. The
sight of the garden, and beyond, the free stretch of the out-door world
went to her head like wine. She jumped up, her eyes sparkling with a
sudden glorious thought. One more glance around the buzzing hot sea of
flowery hats and white gloves made the thought a resolution.

"Ann!" she whispered recklessly, "I'm going to jump through this window
and run away! I am so!"

"Lizzie!" gasped Mrs. Coulson in dismay. The fat lady was still under
the surgeon's knife and talked on undisturbed. Annie's heart sank.
One glance at