for anything but contentment,
and looked upon it as a Christian virtue, demurred with:--

"The whole affair is so ridiculously out of proportion."

Mr. Constantine glanced, with admiration in his gallant though elderly
eye, over Miss Le Pettit's figure as she lay back in the gilt chair;
glanced from her high, polished forehead, round which the smooth
chestnut hair showed as gleaming, from her parted red lips and bare,
sloping shoulders to her tiny waist and the outward spring beneath it of
the clouded tulle that lapped in a dozen baby waves over the globe of
her swelling crinoline.

"When I was a young man," he said, "the ladies went about in little
robes, such as you would not wear nowadays as a shift. We thought them
pretty then, and thought none the worse of them because they made the
women look more or less as God saw fit to make 'em. Yet now we think you
equally lovely as you float about the world like monstrous beautiful
bubbles, so that a man must adore at a distance and only guess at
Paradise in a gust of wind.... Yet to the next generation, believe me or
not as you like, your garb will seem too preposterous to be true, and a
generation later Time will pay you the unkindest cut of all--you will be
picturesque, and your grand-daughters will revive you--for fancy dress.
Proportion, ma'am, is nothing in the world but fashion."

"Now we are talking about something I know more about than you, Mr.
Constantine," cried Miss Le Pettit archly, "and I, for one, do not
believe that the present style of dress can ever go completely out; it
is too becoming. We shall have novelties, of course, but the idea will
remain the same. And, talking of novelties, if you don't scorn such
things, I will tell you a great secret. I am the first person to procure
one of the new jackets--like the Princess of Wales wears, you know.
You must have heard about them. Alexandra jackets they're called. Isn't
that pretty? And they're just as pretty as she is. The sleeve...."

And thus the great description flowed on, with a bevy of entranced
girls, who had caught the raised tone, fluttering round in excitement
like a crowd of butterflies round a blossom of extra sweetness.

From which it will be seen that a month had already passed since Loveday
had been the excitement of society, and that this conversation between
the eccentric Mr. Constantine and the charming Miss Le Pettit was almost
the last flickering of interest in her fate. The life of