un after him, and flatter him so outrageously, are really
more merciless than I am. I do not pretend to like him--I can't like
him, somehow. But I'm growing most tremendously sorry for him. And
still more sorry for his mother. She was very grand--a person
altogether satisfying to one's imagination and sense of fitness, at
home, with that noble house and park and racing stable for setting. But
here, she is shorn of her glory somehow."

The girl rose to her feet with lazy grace.

"She is cheapened. And that's a pity. There are more than enough pretty
cheap people among us already.--I must go. There's Sir Reginald looking
for me.--If I could be sure Lady Calmady hated it all I should be more
reconciled."

"Possibly she does hate it all, only that it presents itself as the
least of two evils."

"There is a touch of dancing dogs about it, and that distresses me,"
Miss St. Quentin continued. "It is Lady Calmady's _role_ to be apart,
separate from and superior to the rest."

"The thing's being done as well as it can be," Mr. Quayle put in
mildly.

"It shouldn't be done at all," the girl declared.--"Here I am, Sir
Reginald. You want to go on? I'm quite ready."

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH KATHERINE TRIES TO NAIL UP THE WEATHERGLASS TO SET FAIR

It is to be feared that intimate acquaintance with Lady Calmady's
present attitude of mind would not have proved altogether satisfactory
to that ardent idealist Honoria St. Quentin. For, unquestionably, as
the busy weeks of the London season went forward, Katherine grew
increasingly far from "hating it all." At first she had found the
varied interests and persons presented to her, the rapid interchange of
thought, the constant movement of society, slightly bewildering. But,
as Julius March had foretold, old habits reasserted themselves. The
great world, and the ways of it, had been familiar to her in her youth.
She soon found herself walking in its ways again with ease, and
speaking its language with fluency. And this, though in itself of but
small moment to her, procured her, indirectly, a happiness as greatly
desired as it had been little anticipated.

For to Richard the great world was, as yet, something of an
undiscovered country. Going forth into it he felt shy and diffident,
though a lively curiosity possessed him. The gentler and more modest
elements of his nature came into play. He was sensible of his own
inexperience, and turned with instinctive trust and tender r