pp," she said. "I am jealous of
you, Captain Flint. She will be my great friend in Tilling, and if you
marry her, I shall hate you, for that will mean that she likes you
best."

Miss Mapp hated nobody at that moment, not even Diva, off whose face the
hastily-applied powder was crumbling, leaving little red marks peeping
out like the stars on a fine evening. Dinner came to an end with roasted
chestnuts brought by the Contessa from Capri.

"I always scold Amelia for the luggage she takes with her," said Mr.
Wyse to Diva. "Amelia dear, you are my hostess to-night"--everybody saw
him look at Mrs. Poppit--"you must catch somebody's eye."

"I will catch Miss Mapp's," said Amelia, and all the ladies rose as if
connected with some hidden mechanism which moved them simultaneously....
There was a great deal of pretty diffidence at the door, but the
Contessa put an end to that.

"Eldest first," she said, and marched out, making Miss Mapp, Diva and
the mouse feel remarkably young. She might drop her eye-glass and talk
with her mouth full, but really such tact.... They all determined to
adopt this pleasing device in the future. The disappointment about the
announcement of the engagement was sensibly assuaged, and Miss Mapp and
Susan, in their eagerness to be younger than the Contessa, and yet take
precedence of all the rest, almost stuck in the doorway. They rebounded
from each other, and Diva whizzed out between them. Quaint Irene went
in her right place--last. However quaint Irene was, there was no use in
pretending that she was not the youngest.

However hopelessly Amelia had lost her heart to Miss Mapp, she did not
devote her undivided attention to her in the drawing-room, but swiftly
established herself at the card-table, where she proceeded, with a most
complicated sort of Patience and a series of cigarettes, to while away
the time till the gentlemen joined them. Though the ladies of Tilling
had plenty to say to each other, it was all about her, and such comments
could not conveniently be made in her presence. Unless, like her, they
talked some language unknown to the subject of their conversation, they
could not talk at all, and so they gathered round her table, and watched
the lightning rapidity with which she piled black knaves on red queens
in some packs and red knaves on black queens in others. She had taken
off all her rings in order to procure a greater freedom of finger, and
her eye-glass continued to crash on to