s carried a large wooden basket filled to overflowing with
exquisite roses. Every bloom was perfect, and each had been cut at
exactly the right moment.

CHAPTER IV

JANE VOLUNTEERS

The duchess plumped down her basket in the middle of the strawberry
table.

"There, good people!" she said, rather breathlessly. "Help yourselves,
and let me see you all wearing roses to-night. And the concert-room is
to be a bower of roses. We will call it 'LA FETE DES ROSES.' ... No,
thank you, Ronnie. That tea has been made half an hour at least, and
you ought to love me too well to press it upon me. Besides, I never
take tea. I have a whiskey and soda when I wake from my nap, and that
sustains me until dinner. Oh yes, my dear Myra, I know I came to your
interesting meeting, and signed that excellent pledge 'POUR ENCOURAGER
LES AUTRES'; but I drove straight to my doctor when I left your house,
and he gave me a certificate to say I MUST take something when I needed
it; and I always need it when I wake from my nap.... Really, Dal, it
is positively wicked for any man, off the stage, to look as picturesque
as you do, in that pale violet shirt, and dark violet tie, and those
white flannels. If I were your grandmother I should send you in to take
them off. If you turn the heads of old dowagers such as I am, what
chance have all these chickens? ... Hush, Tommy! That was a very
naughty word! And you need not be jealous of Dal. I admire you still
more. Dal, will you paint my scarlet macaw?"

The young artist, whose portraits in that year's Academy had created
much interest in the artistic world, and whose violet shirt had just
been so severely censured, lay back in his lounge-chair, with his arms
behind his head and a gleam of amusement in his bright brown eyes.

"No, dear Duchess," he said. "I beg respectfully to decline the
commission, Tommy would require a Landseer to do full justice to his
attitudes and expression. Besides, it would be demoralising to an
innocent and well-brought-up youth, such as you know me to be, to spend
long hours in Tommy's society, listening to the remarks that sweet bird
would make while I painted him. But I will tell you what I will do. I
will paint you, dear Duchess, only not in that hat! Ever since I was
quite a small boy, a straw hat with black ribbons tied under the chin
has made me feel ill. If I yielded to my natural impulses now, I should
hide my face in Miss Champion's lap, and kick and scream u