which I speak grows almost past
endurance. A faint, gray pallor supersedes the vivid carmine of a while
ago. She sighs with evident difficulty, and sinks back heavily amongst
her cushions.

CHAPTER XII.

"Friendship is constant in all other things,
Save in the office and affairs of love."
--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.

"I SHOULD think if we are going to give our dance at all, it ought to be
soon," says Dulce, with a shrug and a somewhat listless little yawn.

"So we ought," says Dicky Browne, briskly. It seems the most natural
thing in the world that he should use the first person plural, and that
he should appear to be the chief promoter of the dance in question.
"We've been talking of it a considerable lot, you know," he goes on,
confidentially, "and they will all think it a dodge on your part if you
don't give it within the next fortnight."

"A dodge!" says Miss Blount, very justly incensed. "What dodge?"

"Well, look here," says Dicky--"there once was a fellow--"

He breaks off at this interesting juncture, and, fixing his glass in his
best eye, stares at a figure coming slowly towards them from the house.
They all follow his gaze, and find themselves criticising the
approaching form in a vague, surprised fashion.

"Great hat! look at Julia!" says Dicky, at last, giving way to speech
that will not be repressed. The exclamation is quite in keeping with the
scene. Julia, in a head gear of the style usually described as a Rubens,
of the very largest description, comes simpering up to them, filled with
the belief that now, if ever, she is looking her very best. "Great" _is_
the word for it. She is indeed all that.

"My dear Julia, where have you been!" says Dulce, ignoring the hat.

"Searching every room in the house for that last book of Ouida's," says
Julia, promptly, who has in reality been posing before a mirror in her
own room, crowned with a Rubens. "I'm always losing my things, you
know--and my way; my boat, for example, and my train, and my umbrella."
She is plainly impressed with the belief that she is saying something
smart, and looks conscious of it.

"Why don't you add your temper," says Dicky Browne, with a mild
smile--which rather spoils the effect of her would-be smartness.

"We were talking about our ball," says Dulce, somewhat quickly. "Dicky
seems to think that we shall lose caste in the neighborhood if we put it
off much longer."