party, in honour of the new house, and the drawing-room furniture was being stored for safety in the spare bedroom until the rout was over. Doubtless the first rumour of the Miss Traceys' party was meanly come by, but it was none the less engrossing, all the same. Miss Lydia hoped that no one would believe for a moment that she was in any way connected with the fraudulent intrusion that had been made into Miss Tracey's secret, and Miss Tracey said,—

"I have known Mary Anne Lovekin for thirty years"—this was understating the case, but numbers are not exactly stated as we grow older—"but I never would have believed that she could have done such a thing."

"Bad butter," said Miss Belinda, shaking her head in an emphatic fashion; "bad butter, bad butter!"

"I do not want to judge people," said Miss Tracey; "but there was a want of delicacy about opening a closed door which I for one cannot forgive." The Miss Traceys' good-breeding is proverbial in Stowel, and it was felt that her uncompromising attitude could not but be excused when it was a matter of her most honourable sensibilities having been outraged.

"I shall not say what I think," said Miss Ruby.

We often find that when Miss Ruby cannot transcend what her sister has said, she has a way of hinting darkly at a possible brilliance of utterance which for some reason she refrains from making.

"Bad butter!" said Miss Belinda; "bad, bad butter!"

Many years ago Miss Belinda Blind, who was then a beautiful young woman, was thrown from a pony carriage. The result of the fall was an injury to the spine, and she was smitten with a paralytic stroke which deprived her of all power of speech. She was dumb for some years, and then two phrases came back to her stammering tongue, "glory," and "bad butter." She understands perfectly what is said to her, but she has no means of replying, save in this very limited vocabulary. And, strangely enough, these words can only be made to correspond with Miss Belinda's feelings. However polite her intentions may be, if at heart she disapproves she can only utter her two words of opprobrium. When a sermon displeases her she sits in her pew muttering softly, and her lips show by their movement the words she is repeating; while a particularly good cup of tea will evoke from her the extravagant phrase, "Glory, glory, glory!"

"Certainly," I said to Miss Lydia on the day succeeding the famous visit to the Traceys, "Mrs. Lovekin's information, if so it may be called, has been wrongly come by, and yet so frail is human nature one cannot help speculating upon it."

"That is what is so sad," said Miss Lydia; "one almost feels as though sharing in Mrs. Lovekin's deceit by dwelling upon her information, and yet one's mind seems incapable of even partially forgetting such an announcement."

Perhaps some suggestion of what was forming the topic of conversation in the town may have reached the Miss Traceys, and hastened their disclosure of the mystery. For very shortly afterwards, one morning when a flood of April sunshine had called us out of doors to wander on the damp paths of the garden, and watch bursting buds and listen to the song of birds in a very rural and delightful fashion, we were informed by a servant who tripped out in a white cap and apron, quite dazzling in the sunshine, that the Miss Traceys were within.

I appealed to my sister to furnish me with a means of escape. But she replied: "I am afraid they have seen you. Besides, you know I like you to see people." We went indoors, and Miss Ruby apologized for the untimely hour at which she and her sister had come, but explained it by saying, "We wanted to find you alone." And then we knew that the mystery was about to be solved.

"You are the first to hear about it," said Miss Tracey in a manner which was distinctly flattering. The Miss Traceys sit very erect on their chairs, and when they come to call I always apologize for having my leg up on the sofa.

"The fact is," Miss Tracey went on, "that we knew that we could rely upon your good sense and judgment in a matter which is exercising us very seriously at present."

"It is a delicate subject, of course," said Miss Ruby, "but one which we feel certain we may confide to you."

"We always look upon Mr. Hugo as a man of the world," said Miss Tracey, "although he is such an invalid, and we rely upon the sound judgment of you both."

Well, to state the subject without further preamble—but of course it must be understood that everything spoken this morning was to be in strict confidence—would we consider that they, the Miss Traceys, were sufficiently chaperoned if their brother the Vicar were present at the dance, and promised not to leave until the last gentleman had quitted the house?

I do not like to overstate a lady's age, and it is with the utmost diffidence that I suggest that Miss Ruby Tracey, the younger of the two sisters, may be on the other side of forty.

"You see, we have not only our own good name to consider," said Miss Tracey, "but the memory of our dear and ever-respected father must, we feel, be our guide in this matter, and we cannot decide how he would have wished us to act. If our brother were married it would simplify matters very much."

"You would have had your invitation before now," said Miss Ruby, "if we had been able to come to a decision, but without advice we felt that was impossible. I am sure," she went on, giving her mantle a little nervous composing touch, and glancing aside as though hardly liking to face any eye directly—"I am sure the things one hears of unmarried women doing nowadays ... but of course one would not like to be classed with that sort of person."

Palestrina was the first of us who spoke.

"I think," she said gravely, "that as you are so well known here, nothing could be said."

"You really think so?" said Miss Ruby.

But Miss Tracey still demurred. She said: "But it is the fact of our being so well known here that really constitutes my chief uneasiness. We often feel," she added with a sigh, "that in another place we could have more liberty."

"I assure you," said Miss Ruby, in a tone of playful confession, "that when we go to visit our cousins in London we are really quite shockingly frivolous. I do not know what it is about London; one always seems to throw off all restraint."

"I think you are giving a wrong impression, dear," said Miss Tracey. "There was nothing in the whole of our conduct in London which would not bear repetition in Stowel. Only, in a place like this, one feels one must often explain one's actions, lest they should give rise to misrepresentations; whereas in London, although behaving, I hope, in a manner just as circumspect, one feels that no apology or explanation is needed."

"There is a sort of cheerful privacy about London," said the other sister, "which I find it hard to explain, but which is nevertheless enjoyable."

To say that there is a dull publicity about the country, was too obvious a retort.

"I think we went out every evening when we were in West Kensington," said Miss Tracey.

"Counting church in the evening," said Miss Ruby.

"Still, those evening services in London almost count as going out," said Miss Tracey; "I mean, they are so lively. I often blame myself for not being able to look upon them more in the light of a religious exercise. I find it as difficult to worship in a strange pew as to sleep comfortably in a strange bed."

The Miss Traceys' morning call lasted until one o'clock, and even then, as they themselves said, rising and shaking out their poplin skirts, there was much left undiscussed which they would still have liked to talk over with us. The ball supper, as they called it, was to be cooked at home, and to consist of nothing which could not be "eaten in the hand."

Claret-cup was, to use Miss Tracey's own figure of speech, to be "flowing" the whole evening, both in the dining-room with the sandwiches and cakes, and on a tray placed in a recess