iberate move.

"How interesting!" she exclaimed. "Won't you tell me the names of the
people?"

Mrs. Kaye, without turning her head, murmured something indistinctly,
and lit another cigarette. "Won't you have a light, Lady Cecilia?" she
asked.

"Please give me one," said Isabel, sweetly. She reached out and took the
cigarette from Mrs. Kaye's faintly resisting hand. "Thank you. I am lazy
about looking for matches. Do you smoke a lot?"

But Mrs. Kaye, irritated, or having reached the conclusion that the
newcomer was not in the very least worth while, said with soft fervor to
her who was: "How delightful that dear Jack was returned! Of course you
are as interested in his career as the rest of us."

"I should be a good deal more so if his mother had turned him across her
knee a little oftener--or if I could shake him myself occasionally."

Isabel, satisfied, more amazed than ever at the infantile ingenuousness
of the snob, rose, and was about to turn away when she met Lady
Cecilia's eyes. They were full of amusement, and there was no mistaking
its purport. In a flash Isabel had responded with a challenge of appeal,
which that accomplished dame was quick to understand.

"Please don't go," she said. "I came over here to talk to you. We are
all so interested in the idea that Vicky is half an American--we had
quite forgotten it. Did you ever see any one look less as if she had
American cousins than Vicky? She might easily have a whole tribe of
Spanish ones."

"Well, she has, in a way." And in response to many questions Isabel
found herself relating the story of Rezanov and Concha Argueello, while
Mrs. Kaye, whatever may have been her sensations, rose with an absent
smile and composedly transferred herself to an equally distinguished
neighborhood.

"I wonder if she has ever tried to condense rudeness into an epigram,"
said Isabel viciously, pausing in her narrative.

Lady Cecilia shook expressively. "At least she has not made an art of
it," she said. "They never do."

VI

The next morning, Isabel, after little sleep, rose early and went out
for a walk. She had sat up until eleven, listening to the puzzling jets
of conversation, or watching the Bridge-players, and when she had
finally reached her room, tired and excited, Flora Thangue had come in
for a last cigarette and half an hour of chat. Her first evening in the
new world had had its clouded moments, for it was impossible not to feel
the alien, and th