or so. On inspection she proves to be a girl of nineteen, decidedly
unprepossessing in appearance,--in fact, as Mr. Murphy, the butler, says
to Mrs. Collins, the housekeeper, "as ugly as if she was bespoke."

A tall girl oppressed by freckles and with hair of a deep--well, let us
emulate our polite French neighbors and call it _blond ardent_.

"Who is she?" asks Lord Rossmoyne, who arrived about an hour ago, to
Ulic Ronayne's discomfiture.

"She's a fraud!" says Mr. Kelly, indignantly,--"a swindle! Madam assured
us, last night, a charming girl was coming, to turn all heads and storm
all hearts; and to-day, when we rushed in a body to the window and
flattened our noses against the panes to see her, lo! a creature with
red hair and pimples----"

"No, no; freckled, my dear Owen," interrupts Olga, indolently.

"It is all the same at a distance! general effect fatal in both cases,"
says Mr. Kelly, airily. "It makes one positively uncomfortable to look
at her. I consider her being thrust upon us like this a deliberate
insult. I think if she continues I shall leave."

"Oh, _don't_," says Desmond, in a tone of agonized entreaty. "How
_should_ we manage to get on without you?"

"Badly, badly, I know that," regretfully. "But it is a question of
breaking either your hearts or mine. Some of us must go to the wall; it
would be unfair to the world to make it me."

"I don't believe you will go far," says Mrs. Herrick, slowly. Kelly
glances at her quickly, but she does not lift her eyes from the little
sock, and her fingers move rapidly, easily as ever.

"London or Paris," he says,--"the city of fogs or the city of frogs. I
don't know which I prefer."

"Better stay where you are," says Brian.

"Well, I really didn't think her so very plain," says Bella Fitzgerald,
who thinks it pretty to say the kind thing always. "A large mouth _is_
an affliction, certainly; and as for her complexion--but really, after
all, it is better to see it as it is than painted and powdered, as one
sees other people."

This is a faint cut at Olga, who is fond of powder, and who has not
scrupled to add to her charms by a little touch of rouge now and then
when she felt pallor demanded it.

"I think a little artificial aid might improve poor Miss Browne," says
Hermia Herrick. Miss Browne is the new arrival.

"I don't. I think it is an abominable thing to cheat the public like
that," says Miss Fitzgerald, doggedly: "nobody respectable would do it.