d tossed the
paper on to the table.

"Peachy darling," she began, with slow deliberation. "May I have a
friend to stay with me?"

Mrs. Delarayne continued to gaze into the street. She did not like being
called Peachy. She had an indistinct feeling that it sounded
vulgar,--why she would have been unable to explain. Nevertheless, since
anything was preferable to being called "Mother" at the top of
Leonetta's strident soprano in the public highway, and for some reason
or other Leonetta would not make use of the name "Edith," she felt that
it would perhaps be diplomatic to say nothing.

"Who is she?" she enquired cautiously.

Leonetta was silent for a moment. It was not the question, but the
caution that dictated it, that struck the girl as strange.

"Isn't it enough that she is a friend of mine?" she observed.

"Quite, of course!" Mrs. Delarayne hastened to reply. "I only
meant,--what is her name, who are her people?"

"Vanessa Vollenberg," answered Leonetta.

"It sounds foreign," was the mother's quiet comment.

"As a matter of fact, it is."

"It sounds a little Jewish."

"She is a Jewess," Leonetta admitted.

Mrs. Delarayne purred approvingly over her remarkable display of
insight.

"She's very beautiful and wonderfully clever," Leonetta pursued.

"How old?"

"A year older than I am,--eighteen and a half."

"Jewesses are always pretty at that age," Mrs. Delarayne muttered,
glancing at her daughter furtively for a moment.

"Oh yes, I know," Leonetta replied with unexpected warmth; "and they
fade quickly afterwards. That's what everybody says."

It was clear that for some obscure reasons, she was very much attached
to Vanessa Vollenberg.

"But Mrs. Vollenberg," she continued, "is the most beautiful woman in
the world. She has been painted by every great artist in Europe. So she
can't have faded much."

"How long do you want Vanessa to stay?"

Leonetta suggested that her friend might go to Brineweald with them for
a fortnight; Mrs. Delarayne said that it might be three weeks if she
chose, and the girl bounded towards her mother and embraced her.

"Oh Peachy, my own Peachy,--that is sweet of you," she exclaimed, "you
are forgiven for not coming to the Claude hag to-morrow."

One of the points in Cleopatra's nature that greatly endeared her to her
parent, was that she scarcely ever kissed, and when she did so, it was
delicately, with a respectful consideration for her mother's facial
toilet. Mor