oat and
liberty scarf, then she shook herself free of her own wraps, rather
than removed them. She did not even glance at herself in the glass.
Her reason for so doing was partly confidence in her own appearance,
partly distrust of the glass. She had viewed herself carefully in her
own looking-glass before she left home. She believed in what she had
seen there, but she did not care to disturb that belief, and she saw
that Mrs. Slade's mirror over her white and yellow draped dressing
table stood in a cross-light. While all admitted Alice Mendon's
beauty, nobody had ever suspected her of vanity; yet vanity she had,
in a degree.

The other women in the room looked at her. It was always a matter of
interest of Fairbridge what she would wear, and this was rather
curious, as, after all, she had not many gowns. There was a certain
impressiveness about her mode of wearing the same gown which seemed
to create an illusion. To-day in her dark red gown embroidered with
poppies of still another shade, she created a distinctly new
impression, although she had worn the same costume often before at
the club meetings. She went downstairs in advance of the other women
who had arrived before, and were yet anxiously peering at themselves
in the cross-lighted mirror, and being adjusted as to refractory
neckwear by one another.

When Alice entered Mrs. Slade's elegant little reception-room, which
was done in a dull rose colour, its accessories very exactly
matching, even to Mrs. Slade's own costume, which was rose silk under
black lace, she was led at once to a lady richly attired in black,
with gleams of jet, who was seated in a large chair in the place of
honour, not quite in the bay window but exactly in the centre of the
opening. The lady quite filled the chair. She was very stout. Her
face, under an ornate black hat, was like a great rose full of
overlapping curves of florid flesh. The wide mouth was perpetually
curved into a bow of mirth, the small black eyes twinkled. She was
Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder, who had come from New York to deliver her
famous lecture upon the subject: "Where does a woman shine with more
lustre, at home or abroad?"

The programme was to be varied, as usual upon such occasions, by
local talent. Leila MacDonald, who sang contralto in the church
choir, and Mrs. Arthur Wells, who sang soprano, and Mrs. Jack Evarts,
who played the piano very well, and Miss Sally Anderson, who had
taken lessons in elocution, all had