t real life is not half so accommodating. I 'll talk to Gusty
about this myself. And now, do tell me about yourself. Is there no
engagement? no fatal attachment that all this change of fortune has
blighted? Who is he, dearest? tell me all! You don't know what a
wonderful creature I am for expedients. There never was the like of
me for resources. I could always pull any one through a difficulty but
myself."

"I am sorry I have no web to offer you for disentanglement."

"So then he has behaved well; he has not deserted you in your change of
fortune?"

"There is really no one in the case," said Nelly, laughing. "No one to
be either faithful or unworthy."

"Worse again, dearest. There is nothing so good at your age as an
unhappy attachment. A girl without a grievance always mopes; and," added
she, with a marked acute-ness of look, "moping ages one quicker than
downright grief. The eyes get a heavy expression, and the mouth drags at
the corners, and the chin--isn't it funny, now, such a stolid feature
as the chin should take on to worry us?--but the chin widens and becomes
square, like those Egyptian horrors in the Museum."

"I must look to that," said Nelly, gravely. "I'd be shocked to find my
chin betraying me."

"And men are such wretches. There is no amount of fretting they don't
exact from us; but if we show any signs of it afterwards--any hard lines
about the eyes, or any patchiness of color in the cheek--they cry out,
'Is n't she gone off?' That's their phrase. 'Is n't she gone off?'"

"How well you understand; how well you read them!"

"I should think I do; but after all, dearest, they have very few
devices: if it was n't that they can get away, run off to the clubs and
their other haunts, they would have no chance with us. See how they
fare in country houses, for instance. How many escape there! What a nice
stuff your dress is made of!"

"It was very cheap."

"No matter; it's English. That's the great thing here. Any one can buy a
'gros.' What one really wants is a nameless texture and a neutral tint.
You must positively walk with me on the Pincian in that dress. Roman
men remark everything. You 'll not be ten minutes on the promenade
till every one will know whether you wear two buttons on your gloves or
three."

"How odious!"

"How delightful! Why, my dear child, for whom do we dress? Not for each
other: no more than the artists of a theatre act or sing for the rest of
the company. Our audience is