fore the
festivity. She was really ingenious, and invented a number of new
methods of entertainment. It was she who, with the aid of a couple of
gardeners, transformed the tents into bowers of green boughs and
arranged the decorations of the tables and the park gates.

"What a lot of walking you do!" Lord Walderhurst said to her once, as
she passed the group on the lawn. "Do you know how many hours you have
been on your feet to-day?"

"I like it," she answered, and, as she hurried by, she saw that he was
sitting a shade nearer to Lady Agatha than she had ever seen him sit
before, and that Agatha, under a large hat of white gauze frills, was
looking like a seraph, so sweet and shining were her eyes, so
flower-fair her face. She looked actually happy.

"Perhaps he has been saying things," Emily thought. "How happy she will
be! He has such a nice pair of eyes. He would make a woman very happy."
A faint sigh fluttered from her lips. She was beginning to be physically
tired, and was not yet quite aware of it. If she had not been physically
tired, she would not even vaguely have had, at this moment, recalled to
her mind the fact that she was not of the women to whom "things" are
said and to whom things happen.

"Emily Fox-Seton," remarked Lady Maria, fanning herself, as it was
frightfully hot, "has the most admirable effect on me. She makes me feel
generous. I should like to present her with the smartest things from the
wardrobes of all my relations."

"Do you give her clothes?" asked Walderhurst.

"I haven't any to spare. But I know they would be useful to her. The
things she wears are touching; they are so well contrived, and produce
such a decent effect with so little."

Lord Walderhurst inserted his monocle and gazed after the straight,
well-set-up back of the disappearing Miss Fox-Seton.

"I think," said Lady Agatha, gently, "that she is really handsome."

"So she is," admitted Walderhurst--"quite a good-looking woman."

That night Lady Agatha repeated the amiability to Emily, whose grateful
amazement really made her blush.

"Lord Walderhurst knows Sir Bruce Norman," said Agatha. "Isn't it
strange? He spoke of him to me to-day. He says he is clever."

"You had a nice talk this afternoon, hadn't you?" said Emily. "You both
looked so--so--as if you were enjoying yourselves when I passed."

"Did he look as if he were enjoying himself? He was very agreeable. I
did not know he could be so agreeable."

"I have