ad most interesting experiences. Indeed, I'm not
exaggerating."

"My dear Gwen, what _do_ you expect?"

"Oh--_you_ know! You're only making believe. Why, when I said to him
that she had been a strikingly pretty girl in her young days, and had
refused no end of offers of marriage, he ... _What_ do you say?"

"I said 'not no end.'"

"Well--of course not! But I thought it as well to say so."

"And what did he say to that?"

"He got his eyeglass right to look at her, as if he had never seen her
before, and came to a critical decision:--'Ye-es, yes, yes--so I should
have imagined. Quite so!' It amounted to acquiescing in her having gone
off, and was distinctly rude. She's better than that when I speak to her
about him certainly. This morning she said he smoked too many cigars."

"How absurd you are, Gwen! Why was that better?"

"H'm--it's a little difficult to say! But it _is_ better, distinctly.
There--they've heard us coming!"

"Why?"

"Because they both jumped farther off. They were far enough already,
goodness knows!... Good evening, Percy! Good evening, Aunt Constance!
We've had such a lovely drive home from Chorlton. I suppose the others
are on in front." And so forth. Every _modus vivendi_, at arm's length,
between any and every single lady and gentleman, was to be fooled to the
top of its bent, in their service.

The carriage was aware it was _de trop_, but was also alive to the
necessity of pretending it was not. So it interested itself for a moment
in some palpable falsehoods about the cause of the pedestrians figuring
as derelicts; and then, representing itself as hungering for the society
of their vanguard, started professedly to overtake it. It was really
absolutely indifferent on the subject.

"I suppose," said Miss Grahame enigmatically, as soon as inaudibility
became a certainty, "I suppose that's why you wanted Miss
Smith-Dickenson to come to Cavendish Square?"

Gwen did not treat this as a riddle; but said, equally
inexplicably:--"He could call." And very little light was thrown on the
mystery by the reply:--"Very well, Gwen dear, go your own way." Perhaps
a little more, though not much, by Gwen's marginal comment:--"You know
Aunt Constance lives at an outlandish place in the country?"

"Do you know, Gwen dear," said Miss Grahame, after reflection, "I really
think we ought to have offered them a lift up to the house. Stop,
Blencorn!" Blencorn stopped, without emotion. Gwen said:--"What
non