from which Hilda, interrupting a glance or two from
the ladies purring past, drew suspicion. "I am going now," she said.
"It--it isn't quite suitable here," and there was just enough suggestion
in the point of her fan to make him think of his frock. "It is an
unpardonable truth that if we stay any longer I shall make people talk
about you."

He turned astonished eyes upon her, eyes in which she remembered
afterwards there was absolutely nothing but a literal and pained
apprehension of what she said. "You are a good woman," he exclaimed.
"How could such a thing be possible!"

The faintest embarrassment, the merest suggestion of distress, came into
her face and concentrated in her eyes, which she fixed upon him as if
she would bring his words to the last analysis, and answer him as she
would answer a tribunal.

"A good woman?" she repeated, "I don't know--isn't that a refinement of
virtue? No; standing on my sex I make no claim, but as PEOPLE go I am
good. Yes, I am good."

"In my eyes you are splendid," he replied, content, and gave her
his arm. They went together through the reception-rooms, and the
appreciation of her grew in him. If in the bright and silken distance he
had not seen his Bishop it might have glowed into a cordiality of speech
with his distinctive individual stamp on it. But he saw his Bishop, his
ceinture tightened on him, and he uttered only the trite saying about
the folly of counting on the sensibility of swine.

"Yes," she laughed into her good-night to him, "but I'm not sure that it
isn't better to be the pig than the pearl."

CHAPTER XIX

"Not long ago," said Hilda, "I had a chat with him. We sat on the grass
in the middle of the Maidan, and there was nothing to interfere with my
impressions."

"What were your impressions? No!" Alicia cried. "No! Don't tell me. It
is all so peaceful now, and simple, and straightforward. You think such
extraordinary things. He comes here quite often, to talk about her. He
is coming this afternoon. So I have impressions too--and they are just
as good."

"All right." Hilda crossed her knees more comfortably. "WHAT did you say
the Surgeon-Major paid for those Teheran tiles?"

"Something absurd--I've forgotten. He writes to her regularly, diary
letters, by every mail."

"Do you tell him what to put into them?"

"Hilda, sometimes--you're positively gross."

"I daresay, my dear. You didn't come out of a cab, and you never are. I
like being gross,