spend a year there, at least; and of course it is out of the question for Jack to leave England again."

"You would not spend six months out of Curzon Street. You are the most confirmed Londoner I know."

"Do you think so?"

Miss Thangue replied, impulsively, "I have often wondered if you numbered satiety among your complexities!"

This was as far as she had ever adventured into the mysterious backwaters of Victoria's soul, and she dropped her eyelids lest a deprecating glance meet the contempt it deserved; both with a due regard for the limit imposed by good taste, despised the faint heart.

"I hate the sight of London!" Her tone had changed so suddenly that Flora winked. "If it were not for Jack I would leave—get out. I am sick of the whole game."

"Oh, be on your guard," cried her friend, sharply. "That sort of thing means the end of youth."

"Youth after fifty depends upon your doctor, your masseuse, and your dressmaker. I do not say that my present state of mind is sown with evergreens and immortelles, but the fact remains that for the present I have come to the end of myself and am interested in no one on earth but Jack."

Miss Thangue stared into her teacup, recalling the gossip of a year ago, although she had given it little heed at the time: Victoria had been transiently interested so often! But all the world knew that when Arthur Gwynne was killed Sir Cadge Vanneck had been off his head about Victoria; and that when obvious restrictions vanished into the family vault he had left abruptly for Rhodesia to develop his mines, and had not found time to return since. Sir Cadge was about the same age as the famous beauty, and rose quite two inches above her lofty head. People had grown accustomed to the fine appearance they made when together—"Artie" was ruddy and stout—and although Victoria reinforced her enemies, for Vanneck was one of the most agreeable and accomplished men in London, the artistic sense of that lenient world was tickled at their congruities and took their future mating for granted; Arthur Gwynne was sure to meet his death on the hunting-field, for he was far too heavy for a horse and rode vilely. When he fulfilled his destiny and Vanneck fled, the world was as much annoyed as amused. But they were amused, and Flora Thangue knew that this gall must have bitten deeper than the loss of Vanneck, who may or may not have made an impression on this woman too proud and too spoiled to accept homage in public otherwise than passively, whatever may have been the unwritten tale of her secret hours. The excuses hazarded by Vanneck's friends were neither humorous nor sentimental, but no one denied that they were eminently sensible: his first wife had died childless, his estates were large, his title was one of the oldest in England. But although no one pitied Victoria Gwynne, many were annoyed at having their mental attitude disarranged, and this no doubt had kept the gossip alive and been a constant source of irritation to a woman whose sense of humor was as deep as her pride.

Flora replied at random. "Jack couldn't very well get on without you."

His mother's eyes flashed. "I flatter myself he could not—at present. If Julia Kaye would only marry him!"

"She won't," cried Flora, relieved at the change of tone. "And why do you wish it? She is two years older, of quite dreadful origin—and—well—I don't like her; perhaps my opinion is a little biased."

"She is immensely rich, one of the ablest political women in London, and Jack is desperately in love with her."

"I cannot picture Jack in extremities about any one, although I don't deny that he has his sentimental seizures. He even made love to me when he was cutting his teeth. But he doesn't need a lot of money, you rank higher than she among the political women, and—well, I believe her to be bad-tempered, and more selfish than any woman I have ever known."

"He loves her. He wants her. He would dominate any woman he married. He is such a dear that no woman who lived with him could help loving him. Moreover, she is inordinately ambitious, and Jack's career is the most promising in England."

"Jack is far too good for her, and I am glad that he will not get her. I happen to know that she has made up her mind to marry Lord Brathland."

"Bratty is a donkey."

"She would be the last to deny it, but he is certain to be a duke if he lives, and she would marry a man that had to be led round with a string for the sake of being called 'your grace' by the servants. She'll never be anything but a third-rate duchess, and people that tolerate her now will snub her the moment she gives herself airs. But I suppose she thinks a duchess is a duchess."

"Money goes pretty far with us," said Lady Victoria, dryly.

"Doesn't it? Nevertheless—you know it as well as I do—among the people that really count other things go further, and duchesses have been put in their place before this—you have done it yourself. Julia Kaye has kept her head so far because she has been hunting for strawberry leaves, and there is no denying she's clever; but once she is in the upper air—well, I have seen her as rude as she dares be, and if she became a duchess she would cultivate rudeness as part of the rôle."

"We can be rude enough."

"Yes, and know how to be. A parvenu never does."

"She is astonishingly clever."

"Duchesses are born—even the American ones. Julia Kaye has never succeeded in being quite natural; she has always the effect of rehearsing the part of the great lady for amateur theatricals. Poor Gussy Kaye might have coached her better. The moment she mounts she'll become wholly artificial, she'll patronize, she'll give herself no end of ridiculous airs; she won't move without sending a paragraph to the Morning Post. The back of her head will be quite in line with her charming little bust, and I for one shall walk round and laugh in her face. She is the only person that could inspire me to such a vicious speech, but I am human, and as she so ingenuously snubs me as a person of no consequence, my undazzled eyes see her as she is."

Lady Victoria, instead of responding with the faint, absent, somewhat irritating smile which she commonly vouchsafed those that sought to amuse her, lit another cigarette and leaned back among the cushions of the sofa behind the tea-table. She drew her eyelids together, a rare sign of perturbation. The only stigma of time on her face was a certain sharpness of outline and leanness of throat. But the throat was always covered, and her wardrobe reflected the most fleeting of the fashions, assuring her position as a contemporary, if driving her dressmaker to the verge of bankruptcy. When her bright, black, often laughing eyes were in play she passed with the casual public, and abroad, as a woman of thirty, but with her lids down the sharpness of the lower part of the face arrested the lover of detail.

"Are you sure of that?" she asked, in a moment.

"Quite."

"I am sorry. It will be a great blow to Jack. I hoped she would come round in time."

"She will marry Brathland. I saw Cecilia Spence in town. She was at Maundrell Abbey with them both last week. You may expect the announcement any day—she'll write it herself for the Morning Post. How on earth can Jack find time to think about women with the immense amount of work he gets through?—and his really immodest ambitions! By-the-way—isn't this polling-day? I wonder if he has won his seat? But as I said just now I do not associate Jack with defeat. His trifling set-backs have merely served to throw his manifest destiny into higher relief."

"The telegram should have come an hour ago. I have few doubts—and yet he has so many enemies. I wonder if we shall be born into a world, after we have been sufficiently chastened here, where one can get one's head above the multitude without rousing some of the most hideous qualities in human nature? It is a great responsibility! But there has been no such speaker, nor fighter,