Howard did
not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated
to ask him who they were. They had rather a rude manner of staring
--especially the men--and the air of deriving infinite amusement from
that which went on about them. One of them, a young man with a lisp who
was addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard
demanding as she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark
hair and the colour? Wherever she went, she was aware of them. It was
foolish, she knew, but their presence seemed--in the magnitude which
trifles are wont to assume in the night-watches--of late to have poisoned
her pleasure.

Enlightenment as to the identity of these disturbing persons came, the
next day, from an unexpected source. Indeed, from Mrs. Tyler. She loved
brides, she said, and Honora seemed to her such a sweet bride. It was
Mrs. Tyler's ambition to become thin (which was hitching her wagon to a
star with a vengeance), and she invited our heroine to share her
constitutional on the porch. Honora found the proceeding in the nature of
an ordeal, for Mrs. Tyler's legs were short, her frizzled hair very
blond, and the fact that it was natural made it seem, somehow, all the
more damning.

They had scarcely begun to walk before Honora, with a sense of dismay of
which she was ashamed, beheld some of the people who had occupied her
thoughts come out of the door and form a laughing group at the end of the
porch. She could not rid herself of the feeling that they were laughing
at her. She tried in vain to drive them from her mind, to listen to Mrs.
Tyler's account of how she, too, came as a bride to New York from some
place with a classical name, and to the advice that accompanied the
narration. The most conspicuous young woman in the group, in riding
clothes, was seated on the railing, with the toe of one boot on the
ground. Her profile was clear-cut and her chestnut hair tightly knotted
behind under her hat. Every time they turned, this young woman stared at
Honora amusedly.

"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler, suddenly and unexpectedly in the
midst of a description of the delights of life in the metropolis.

"Who?" asked Honora.

"That young Mrs. Freddy Maitland, sitting on the rail. She's the rudest
woman in New York."

A perversity of spirit which she could not control prompted Honora to
reply:

"Why, I think she is so good-looking, Mrs. Tyler. And she seems to have
so much individua