nicest boy I know--but
I'm afraid he is not particularly clever. He has written some verses in
one or two magazines--of course you can't expect me to criticise them
severely, considering who was the 'only begetter' of them--"

"Oh, that has nothing to do with it," Lionel interrupted again. "He is
sure to get in. There's no qualification at the Garden, so long as
you're all right socially. There are plenty such as he in the club
already."

"But why does he want to get in?" she said, wheeling round. "Why should
he want to sit up all night playing cards? Now tell me honestly, Lionel,
it isn't your doing! You didn't ask him to join, did you? You can't be
treasuring up any feeling of vengeance--"

"Oh, nonsense; I had nothing to do with it. I saw his name in the
candidates' book quite by accident. And the election is by
committee--he'll get in all right. What does he want with it?--oh, I
don't know. Perhaps he has been disappointed in love and seeks for a
little consolation in card-playing."

"Yes, you always sneer at love--because you don't know anything about
it," she said, snappishly. "Or perhaps you are an extinct volcano. I
suppose you have sighed your heart out like a furnace--and for a
foreigner, I'll be bound!"

Nay, it was hardly to be wondered at that Miss Burgoyne should be
indignant with so lukewarm and reluctant a lover, who received her coy
advances with coldness, and was only decently civil to her when they
talked of wholly indifferent matters. The mischief of it was that, in
casting about for some key to the odd situation, she took it into her
head to become jealous of Nina; and many were the bitter things she
managed to say about foreigners generally, and about Italians in
particular, and Italian singers, and so forth. Of course Miss Ross was
never openly mentioned, but Lionel understood well enough at whom these
covert innuendoes were hurled; and sometimes his eyes burned with a fire
far other than that which should be in a lover's eyes when contemplating
his mistress. Indeed, it was a dangerous amusement for Miss Burgoyne to
indulge in. It was easy to wound; it might be less easy to efface the
memory of those wounds. And then there was a kind of devilish ingenuity
about her occult taunts. For example, she dared not say that doubtless
Miss Nina Ross had gone away back to Naples, and had taken up with a
sweetheart, with whom she was now walking about; but she described the
sort of young man calculated