ng Mr. Vinrace at a party, and, being so much struck
by his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a party,
that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr. Vinrace,
and she had always remembered the name,--an uncommon name,--and he had
a lady with him, a very sweet-looking woman, but it was one of those
dreadful London crushes, where you don't talk,--you only look at each
other,--and although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinrace, she didn't
think they had said anything. She sighed very slightly, remembering the
past.

Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her,
so that he always chose a seat near her, and attended to what she was
saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own.

"You who know everything, Mr. Pepper," she said, "tell us how did those
wonderful French ladies manage their salons? Did we ever do anything of
the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason why
we cannot do it in England?"

Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never
been an English salon. There were three reasons, and they were very
good ones, he said. As for himself, when he went to a party, as one was
sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence--his niece, for
example, had been married the other day--he walked into the middle of
the room, said "Ha! ha!" as loud as ever he could, considered that he
had done his duty, and walked away again. Mrs. Thornbury protested. She
was going to give a party directly she got back, and they were all to be
invited, and she should set people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she
heard that he had been caught saying "Ha! ha!" she would--she would do
something very dreadful indeed to him. Arthur Venning suggested that
what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise--a
portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a
bath of cold water, which at a signal could be sprung on Pepper's head;
or they'd have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat
on it.

Susan laughed. She had done her tea; she was feeling very well
contented, partly because she had been playing tennis brilliantly, and
then every one was so nice; she was beginning to find it so much easier
to talk, and to hold her own even with quite clever people, for somehow
clever people did not frighten her any more. Even Mr. Hirst, whom she
had disliked when she first met him, rea