smoothly
polished hair you ever saw, just like a black helmet; and when the
laddie had swung me away in the Merry Widow waltz Sir Lionel went back
to Mrs. Senter. Rather an appropriate air for her to dance to, I
thought. I do pray I'm not getting kitten-catty? Anyhow, I'm not in my
_second_ kittenhood!

You will be wondering by this time why I'm sorry we stayed at Southsea,
when it was all for me, and I seem to have been having the "time of my
life." But I'm coming to the part you want to know about.

I thought perhaps Dick Burden would be vexed at my going off with Sir
Lionel, under his nose, just as he was ready to say "my dance." However,
he walked up to me as if nothing had happened, when it was time for the
second, so I didn't apologize. I thought it best to let sleeping
partners lie.

We danced a little, but Dick, who is one-and-twenty, doesn't waltz half
as well as Sir Lionel, who is forty; and he saw that I thought so.
Presently he asked if I'd rather sit out the rest, and I answered, yes;
so he said he would tell me the things he had to say. He found a quiet
place, which must have looked as if deliberately selected for a
desperate flirtation; and then he didn't do much beating about the bush.
He just told me that he _knew everything_. He'd partly "detected" it,
and partly found out by chance; but of course he made the most of the
detecting bit.

Don't be frightened and get a palpitation at the news, dearest; it isn't
worth it. There's going to be no flare-up. Of course, if I were the
heroine of a really nice melodrama, in such a scene as Dick and I went
through, I should have been accompanied by slow music, with lime-light
every time I turned my head, which would have heartened me up very much;
while Dick would have had villain music--plink, plink, plunk! But I did
as well as I could without an accompaniment, and I think, on the whole,
managed the business very well.

You see, I had to think of Ellaline. I dared not let her out of my mind
for a single instant, for if I should fail her now, at the crucial time,
it would be my fault if her love story burst and went up the spout. If
I'd stopped thinking of her, and saying in my mind while Dick talked, "I
must save Ellaline, no matter what happens to me!" I should certainly
have boxed his ears and told him to go to limbo.

He began by telling me that he'd met a friend of mine, a Miss
Bennett--Kathy Bennett. Oh, mother, just for a minute my heart beat
under