's refined circles.

Her natural cheerfulness expanded like a sunflower, and when her son
Malcolm secured a commission in the --th Hussars, her triumph was
complete. Even the staggering news that Dick had been taken away from
Eton to avoid expulsion for drunkenness proved only a momentary cloud
on the broad horizon of her contentment.

When she was nineteen years of age Elise came to live with her mother,
and as the fiery beauty of the child had mellowed into a sort of
smouldering charm that owed something to the mystic atmosphere of
convent life, Lady Durwent felt that an ally of importance had entered
the arena.

Thus four years passed, and in 1913 (had peeresses been in the habit of
taking inventories) Lady Durwent could have issued a statement somewhat
as follows:

ASSETS.

1 Husband; a Peer.
1 Son; aged twenty-five; decently popular with his regiment.
1 Daughter; marriageable; aged twenty-three.
1 Town House.
1 Country Estate.
The goodwill of numerous _unusual_ people, and the envy of a
lot of minor Peeresses.

LIABILITIES.

1 Son; aged twenty; at Cambridge; in perpetual trouble,
and would have been rusticated ere now had he not been the
son of a lord.
1 Ironmonger.

* * * * * *

'My dear,' said Lady Durwent, glancing at her daughter, who was reading
a novel, 'hadn't you better go and dress?'

'Is there a dinner-party to-night?' asked the girl without looking up.

'Of course, Elise. Have you forgotten that Mr. Selwyn of New York will
be here?'

'Is he as tedious as Stackton Dunckley?'

Lady Durwent frowned with vexation. 'My dear,' she said, 'you are very
trying.'

CHAPTER IV.

PROLOGUE TO A DINNER-PARTY.

I.

Even _unusual_ dinner-parties begin like ordinary ones. There is the
discomfiture of the guest who arrives first, subjected to his hostess's
reassurances that he is not really early. After what seems an
interminable length of time, during which a score of conversational
topics are broached, and both hostess and guest are reduced to a state
bordering on mutual animosity, the remainder of the party arrive _en
masse_, as if by collusion. The butler (who likes to chew the cud of
reflection between the announcements) is openly pained, while the
distracted hostess must manage the introductions, and, as friendships
are begun or enmities renewed, endeavour to initiate the new-comer into
the subject of conversatio