How you will talk of types! Didn't you see that she was unique? You may
come back, if you like, for a quarter of an hour, and we will discuss
her."

Lindsay looked at his watch. "I would come back for a quarter of an hour
to discuss anything or nothing," he replied, "but there isn't time. I am
dining with the Archdeacon. I must go to church."

"Why not be original and dine with the Archdeacon without going to
church? Why not say on arrival: 'My dear Archdeacon, your sermon and
your mutton the same evening--_c'est trop_! I cannot so impose upon your
generosity. I have come for the mutton!'"

Thus was Captain Laura Filbert superseded, as doubtless often before, by
an orthodox consideration. Duff Lindsay drove away in his cart; and
still, for an appreciable number of seconds, Miss Howe stood leaning
over the bannisters, her eyes fixed full of speculation on the place
where he had stood. She was thinking of a scene--a dinner with an
Archdeacon--and of the permanent satisfaction to be got from it; and she
renounced almost with a palpable sigh the idea of the Archdeacon's
asking her.

CHAPTER II.

"Oh, her gift!" said Alicia Livingstone. "It is the lowest, isn't it--in
the scale of human endowment? Mimicry."

Miss Livingstone handed her brother his tea as she spoke, but turned her
eyes and her delicate chin toward Duff Lindsay with the protest.
Lindsay's cup was at his lips, and his eyebrows went up over it as if
they would answer before his voice was set at liberty.

"Mimicry isn't a fair word," he said. "The mimic doesn't interpret. He's
a mere thief of expression. You can always see him behind his stolen
mask. The actress takes a different rank. This one does, anyway."

"You're mixing her up with the apes and the monkeys," remarked
Surgeon-Major Livingstone.

"Mere imitators!" cried Mrs. Barberry.

Alicia did not allow the argument to pursue her. She smiled upon their
energy, and, so to speak, disappeared. It was one of her little ways,
and since it left seeming conquerors on her track nobody quarrelled with
it.

"I've met them in London," she said. "Oh, I remember one hot little
North Kensington flat full of them, and their cigarettes--and they were
always disappointing. There seemed to be, somehow, no basis--nothing to
go upon."

She looked from one to the other of her party with a graceful,
deprecating movement of her head, a head which people were unanimous in
calling more than merely pretty and