those who
survived them and left the field safe, though somewhat sore at heart.
But when she was in her honest, earnest, life-enjoying moods, and meant
no harm,--when she was simply enjoying herself and trying to amuse her
masculine companion, when her gestures were unconscious and her speeches
unstudied, when she laughed through sheer merriment and was charmingly
theatrical because she could not help it and because little bits of
pathos and comedy were natural to her at times, then it was that the
danger became deadly; then it was that her admirers were regardless
of consequences, and defied results. And she was in just such a mood
to-night.

"Come and see us?" she was saying. "Of course you may; and if you
come, you shall have an insight into the domestic workings of modern
Vagabondia. You shall be introduced to half a dozen people who toil not,
neither do they spin successfully, for their toiling and spinning seems
to have little result, after all. You shall see shabbiness and the spice
of life hand-in-hand; and, I dare say, you will find that the figurative
dinner of herbs is not utterly destitute of a flavor of _piquancy_.
You shall see people who enjoy themselves in sheer defiance of
circumstances, and who find a pathos in every-day events, which, in the
camps of the Philistines, mean nothing. Yes, you may come if you care
to." And Ralph Gowan, looking down at the changeful eyes, saw an almost
tender light shining in their depths,--summoned up all at once perhaps
by one of those inexplicable touches of pathos of which she had spoken.

But even coffee and conversation must come to an end at last, and so the
end of this evening came. People began to drop away one by one, bidding
their hostess good-night with the air of individuals who had performed
a duty, and were relieved to find it performed and disposed of for the
time being. So Dolly, leaving her companion with a bright farewell,
and amiably disposing of Lady Augusta, slipped up-stairs to the
retiring-room for her wraps. In the course of three minutes she
came down again, the scarlet shawl draped around her, and the highly
ornamental hood donned. She was of so little consequence in the Bilberry
household that no one met her when she reappeared. Even the servants
knew that her convenience or inconvenience was of small moment, so the
task of summoning her cab would have devolved upon herself, had it not
been for a little incident, which might have been either a