eover, she never, in any circumstances, disarranged her
mother's hair.

"Are they well off?" Mrs. Delarayne asked, easing a ringlet of hair
tenderly back into its position near her ear.

"If you mean the Vollenbergs," Leonetta answered, "they're as rich as
you and Sir Joseph knocked into one."

Her mother protested.

"Oh, very well. He owns a whole quarter of Hull, and has a West Indian
Copra business into the bargain."

Leonetta did not know what "copra" was, but she thought it sounded
sufficiently like a precious metal to suggest immense wealth.

Later in the evening, Mrs. Delarayne and Cleopatra were alone in the
former's bedroom.

"I have a feeling," Cleopatra was saying, "that I don't love Denis
sufficiently to go mad about him. You know what I mean: he may be the
best specimen of manhood who has ever crossed this threshold, but he
does not electrify me."

"That's very sound," her mother rejoined with unusual emphasis. "There's
no need to be electrified by the man one marries."

"Yes, but I feel that one ought,--I mean that seeing that I could,--you
know,--if one is going to be something to a man, one feels that one
would like to be electrified by him."

Mrs. Delarayne deposited her voluminous transformation lovingly upon the
dressing-table,--Cleo was such an intimate friend!

"Rubbish!" she ejaculated. "Romantic rubbish! How often have I told you
girls that provided a man can keep you in comfort and has a clean sweet
mouth, it doesn't matter a rap about anything else. Even if he has dirty
hands and finger-nails in addition, it doesn't signify;--there's the
English Channel and the Atlantic close by to wash them in. But if he
hasn't a clean, sweet mouth, a second deluge wouldn't wash it for him.
How can you attach so much importance to trifles, when in Denis you have
the two first prerequisites in an eminent degree? You are romantic, my
dear Cleo. And matrimony is a matter of flesh and blood. When the
demands of these are properly attended to, I assure you the rest is mere
foolishness. Denis can keep you in comfort, and he has the teeth of an
African negro. What more can you want? You cannot go on losing chance
after chance through these romantic notions."

"But surely," Cleo objected hopelessly, "a man ought to fire you with
something more exciting than the consideration of his means and his
dentition!"

"In our class," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined with gravity, "men no longer set
fire to anything. Get