days later Alice met Mrs. Robbie at a reception; and she took the lady
aside, and tried to tell her how distressed and helpless she was. And
the result was that Mrs. Robbie flew into a passion and railed at her,
declaring in the presence of several people that she had sponged upon
her and abused her hospitality! And so poor Alice came home, weeping
and half hysterical.

All of which, of course, was like oil upon a fire; the heavens were
lighted up with the conflagration. The next development was a paragraph
in Society's scandal-sheet--telling with infinite gusto how a certain
ultra-fashionable matron had taken up a family of stranded waifs from a
far State, and introduced them into the best circles, and even gone so
far as to give a magnificent dance in their honour; and how the
discovery had been made that the head of the family had been secretly
preparing an attack upon their business interests; and of the tearing
of hair and gnashing of teeth which had followed--and the violent
quarrel in a public place. The paragraph concluded with the prediction
that the strangers would find themselves the centre of a merry social
war.

Oliver was the first to show them this paper. But lest by any chance
they should miss it, half a dozen unknown friends were good enough to
mail them copies, carefully marked.--And then came Reggie Mann, who as
free-lance and gossip-gatherer sat on the fence and watched the fun;
Reggie wore a thin veil of sympathy over his naked glee, and brought
them the latest reports from all portions of the battle-ground. Thus
they were able to know exactly what everybody was saying about
them--who was amused and who was outraged, and who proposed to drop
them and who to take them up.

Montague listened for a while, but then he got tired of it, and went
for a walk to escape it--but only to run into another trap. It was
dark, and he was strolling down the Avenue, when out of a brilliantly
lighted jewellery shop came Mrs. Billy Alden to her carriage. And she
hailed him with an exclamation.

"You man," she cried, "what have you been doing?"

He tried to laugh it off and escape, but she took him by the arm,
commanding, "Get in here and tell me about it."

So he found himself moving with the slow stream of vehicles on the
Avenue, and with Mrs. Billy gazing at him quizzically and asking him if
he did not feel like a hippopotamus in a frog-pond.

He replied to her raillery by asking her under which flag she stoo