with
Mr. Grandon. You are to come down here for a day and a night next week,
and we are to go to the opera; it is to be 'Lohengrin,' and you will be
delighted. You are quite a German student, I hear. Now I am going to
make arrangements with the professor and Gertrude."

She smiles superbly and floats over to Gertrude. Violet turns a little
cold; to come here for a day, to remain all night--

"Do you know," says Mrs. Latimer, when she is seated in her sister's
carriage,--Mr. Latimer is to walk down town,--"I think that little Mrs.
Grandon charming. She is coming to me on Tuesday, and we are to give a
kind of family dinner to Gertrude. Laura's vexation made her rather
unjust, and Mrs. Grandon's hair is magnificent, not really red, at all,
and her manners are simply quaint and delicate. She doesn't need any
training; it would be rubbing the bloom off the peach. I just wish
Winnie Ascott could see her!"

"You and John and the Ascotts have rather a weakness for bread-and-milk
flavoring. She _is_ very nice, certainly, and quite presentable, but
one can never predict how these innocent _ingenues_ will develop. They
are very delightful at eighteen, but at eight-and-twenty one sometimes
wants to strangle them, as you do Marcia Grandon."

"Marcia is certainly not the black sheep of the family, for she hasn't
the vim and color for absolute wickedness, but a sort of burr that
pricks and _sticks_ where you least desire it. Now, Laura will make an
extremely stylish woman of fashion, and tall, fair Gertrude, with her
languors and invalidisms, will be picturesque, but an old maid like
Marcia Grandon would be simply intolerable! Let us join hands and get
her married."

"And I dare say Marcia was one of the sweet innocents," Mrs.
Vandervoort remarks, dryly.

"Never, Helen, never! Why, there is a little tint of scandal that she
was having a desperate escapade with a married man when her mother took
her abroad. No, the two are as far apart as the poles. It is really
unjust for you to suppose a resemblance."

"I did not _quite_ infer a resemblance, but I doubt if Mrs. Floyd
_can_ keep pace with her husband, and there are so many silly moths
to flutter about such a man. Mrs. Grandon may turn jealous and sulky,
or become indifferent and leave him to other people's entertainment and
fascinations, and that Madame Lepelletier would never do. They would
make such a splendid couple! Like Laura, I regret the wrecked
opportunity. They seem