let go her grip on youth. She must have been upon
the outer confines of forty, yet her tint was as fresh and clear as it
had been in her teens. Her hair was done in a froth of a myriad curls.
She had ballooned her bust and hour-glassed her waist according to the
fashion of the day. With her fan she beckoned this young man and that
other out of the ranks of those collected about the door, and he came
blushing, indeed, at the favour, and still more at its publicity, but
all the same half-running with eager delight. She danced frequently, but
did not seem to keep to any order or to have any written programme. She
simply told one to go and another to come according to the accredited
methods of the Roman centurion. Patsy noticed that Mrs. Arlington made
no attempts to attract the older men to her side. The Royal Dukes,
indeed, bowed over her hand, said a light word or two, and then moved
off with a slight smile and a certain air of satisfied complicity.

From all this it was evident that Mrs. Arlington was a woman of much
more discernment and courage than Patsy had been given to expect. There
was nothing of the jill-flirt about her. She treated the boys whom she
drew about her as if they had been her sons in need of scolding. She did
not seek to hide her age. Indeed, she rather insisted upon it, and Patsy
heard her bidding a young enthusiast to take himself off and do his duty
to his girl cousins.

"When you have danced with them all, and got your toes duly trodden
upon, come back and I shall see what I can do for you. Till then I have
nothing to say to you. Surely you don't want me to have all the mammas
hating me--there are some who look as if they could poniard me. Pray do
look at that poor dear Lady Lucy. She slops over the seat as if somebody
had opened the tap of a treacle-barrel and let her run out!"

But Mrs. Arlington, for all her loud good-nature, did not see without a
pang the desertion of so many of her usual followers, and after she had
seen Patsy beginning to dance, it suddenly became clear to her that she
must do something to vindicate her rights of property.

"Louis," she said, in that most commanding tone which admitted of no
reply, "go and speak to your mother. Then come straight back and dance
with me. You have not been near the Lady Lucy to-night. And that I can't
have!"

Louis obeyed, but as he made his way round the room he heard remarks
which set him wild with anger and jealousy.

"They say he is