s career, right to the very
close?

To her hosts Madame de Vallorbes appeared in her gayest and most
engaging humour. It was only a flying visit, she mustn't stay, Richard
was waiting for her. Only she felt she must just have two words with
Honoria. And say good-bye? Yes, ten thousand sorrows, it was good-bye.
She was recalled to Paris, home, and duty. She made an expressive
little grimace at Miss St. Quentin.

"Your husband will be"--began Mrs. Cathcart, in her large, gently
authoritative manner.

"Enchanted to see me, of course, dear Cousin Selina, or he would not
have required my return thus urgently. We may take that for said.
Meanwhile what strange sprigs of nobility flourish in the local soil
here."

And she proceeded to give an account of the Fallowfeild party at
luncheon more witty, perhaps, than veracious. Helen could be extremely
entertaining on occasion. She gave reins to her tongue, and it galloped
away with her in most surprising fashion.

"My dear, my dear," interrupted her hostess, "you are a little unkind
surely! My dear, you are a little flippant!"

But Madame de Vallorbes enveloped her in the most assuaging embrace.

"Let me laugh while I can, dearest Cousin Selina," she pleaded. "I have
had a delightful little holiday. Every one has been charming to me.
You, of course--but then you always are that. Your presence breathes
consolation. But Aunt Katherine has been charming too, and that, quite
between ourselves, was a little more than I anticipated. Now the
holiday draws to a close and pay-day looms large ahead. You know
nothing about such pay-days, thank heaven, dear Cousin Selina. They are
far from joyous inventions; and so"--the young lady spread abroad her
hands, palms upward, and shrugged her shoulders under their weight of
costly furs--"and so I laugh, don't you understand, I laugh!"

Miss St. Quentin's delicate, square-cut face wore an air of solicitude
as she followed her friend out of the room. There was a trace of
indolence in her slow, reflective speech, as in her long, swinging
stride--the indolence bred of unconscious strength rather than of
weakness, the leisureliness which goes with staying power both in the
moral and the physical domain.

"See here, Nellie," she said, "forgive brutal frankness, but which is
the real thing to-day--they're each delightful in their own way--the
tears or the laughter?"

"Both! oh, well-beloved seeker after truth," Madame de Vallorbes
answered. "