take her to have an ice, Sir John." (Sir
John Berry was the next-door neighbor.) And with that Lady Mickleham is
said to have resumed her conversation.

"Did you ever hear anything more atrocious?" concluded Mrs. Hilary. "I
really cannot think what Lord Mickleham is doing."

"You surely mean, what Lady Mickleham--?"

"No, I don't," said Mrs. Hilary, with extraordinary decision. "Anything
might have happened to that poor child!"

"Oh, there were not many of the aristocracy present," said I soothingly.

"But it's not that so much as the thing itself. She's the most
disgraceful flirt in London."

"How do you know she was flirting?" I inquired with a smile.

"How do I know?" echoed Mrs. Hilary.

"It is a very hasty conclusion," I persisted. "Sometimes I stay talking
with you for an hour or more. Are you, therefore, flirting with me?"

"With you!" exclaimed Mrs. Hilary, with a little laugh.

"Absurd as the supposition is," I remarked, "it yet serves to point the
argument. Lady Mickleham might have been talking with a friend, just in
the quiet rational way in which we are talking now."

"I don't think that's likely," said Mrs. Hilary; and--well, I do not
like to say that she sniffed--it would convey too strong an idea, but
she did make an odd little sound something like a much etherealized
sniff.

I smiled again, and more broadly. I was enjoying beforehand the little
victory which I was to enjoy over Mrs. Hilary. "Yet it happens to be
true," said I.

Mrs. Hilary was magnificently contemptuous.

"Lord Mickleham told you so, I suppose?" she asked. "And I suppose Lady
Mickleham told him--poor man!"

"Why do you call him 'poor man'?"

"Oh, never mind. Did he tell you?"

"Certainly not. The fact is, Mrs. Hilary--and really, you must excuse me
for having kept you in the dark a little--it amused me so much to hear
your suspicions."

Mrs. Hilary rose to her feet.

"Well, what are you going to say?" she asked.

I laughed, as I answered: "Why, I was the man with Lady Mickleham when
your friend and Berry inter--when they arrived, you know."

Well, I should have thought--I should still think--that she would have
been pleased--relieved, you know, to find her uncharitable opinion
erroneous, and pleased to have it altered on the best authority. I'm
sure that is how I should have felt. It was not, however, how Mrs.
Hilary felt.

"I am deeply pained," she observed after a long pause; and then she held
out her hand