servants are quite prepared. Kitty asks everybody to lunch--then
somebody asks her--and she forgets. It's quite simple."

"Quite," said Cliffe, buttoning up his coat, "but I think I shall go to
the club."

He was looking for his hat, when again there was a commotion on the
stairs--a high voice giving orders--and in burst Kitty. She stood still
as soon as she saw her guests, talking so fast and pouring out such a
flood of excuses that no one could get in a word. Then she flew to each
guest in turn, taking them by both hands--Darrell only excepted--and
showing herself so penitent, amusing, and charming that everybody was
propitiated. It was Fanchette, of course--Fanchette the criminal, the
incomparable. Her dress for the ball. Kitty raised eyes and hands to
heaven--it would be a marvel, a miracle. Unless, indeed, she were lying
cold and quiet in her little grave before the time came to wear it. But
Fanchette's tempers--Fanchette's caprices--no! Kitty began to mimic the
great dressmaker torn to pieces by the crowd of fashionable ladies,
stopping abruptly in the middle to say to Cliffe:

"You were going away? I saw you take up your hat."

"I despaired of my hostess," said Cliffe, with a smile. Then as he
perceived that Mrs. Alcot had taken up the theme and was holding the
others in play, he added in a lower voice, "and I was in no mood for
second-best."

Kitty's eyes twinkled a moment as she turned them on Madeleine Alcot.

"Ah, <i>I</i> remember--at Grosville Park--what a bad temper you had. You
would have gone away furious."

"With disappointment--yes," said Cliffe, as he looked at her with an
admiration he scarcely endeavored to conceal. Kitty was in black, but a
large hat of white tulle, in the most extravagant fashion of the day,
made a frame for her hair and eyes, and increased the general lightness
and fantasy of her appearance. Cliffe tried to recall her as he had
first seen her at Grosville Park, but his recollection of the young girl
could not hold its own against the brilliant and emphatic reality before
him.

At luncheon it chafed him that he must divide her with the Dean. Yet she
was charming with the old man, who chatted history, art, and Paris to
her, with a delightful innocence and ignorance of all that made Lady
Kitty Ashe the talk of the town, and an old-fashioned deference besides,
that insensibly curbed her manner and her phrases as she answered him.
Yet when the Dean left her free she returned