e ugly and poor----"

"There's no accounting for tastes," quoth Lady Butts, gaily. "Mr.
Stubbs--Leonore's first husband--was nothing in particular."

"So you think she might take a 'nothing in particular' for her second?
But remember she's in a different position now. She has only to lift up
her little finger----"

"Apparently she has lifted it," Lady Butts laughed and patted his arm.
"Do try and infuse some spirit into your faint heart, George. You have
had the most wonderful encouragement----"

"It's just _that_ which frightens me. I--I don't like the look of it.
When a prospectus looks too rosy, we shy at it at Koellners. There's a
screw loose somewhere."

"But just now you were all up in the air about Leonore?"

He was silent.

"Could she have done more than she did, George?"

"Less would have put things upon a sounder basis." He shook his head
gloomily.

"A sounder basis? I don't know what you mean, I don't understand those
business phrases," cried his aunt, with very natural vexation; "what in
the world has 'a sounder basis' to do with Leonore Stubbs?"

"I'll tell you;" he roused himself, "I go about the world a good deal,
and I know girls--a little. I know this, that it isn't usual for them to
make the running so freely on their own account when they are--are--in
earnest. When they are in search of scalps, it's different."

"Scalps? Oh, I see; I know. But surely Leonore----"

"She went for me--yes; but she was as cool as a cucumber. Do you know,
once or twice to-day I felt not exactly nervous, but that way--but she?
Not a bit of her. She was all froth and foam,----"

"You are quite poetic, but you don't explain the 'sounder basis'?"

"Hang it all, aunt, I can't think that girl means anything."

"And yet when you came in just now, you told me she was so delightful
and responsive."

"I said 'delightful'--I didn't say responsive'. The truth was, it was
_I_ who had to be responsive. _She_ made the advances--if they could be
called advances. And that isn't what I call having things upon a sound
basis."

With which piece of wisdom the two separated, for though Lady Butts told
herself that her _protege_ was simply suffering from reaction, and that
the reaction would pass, she felt that no more was to be gained by
pursuing the subject at present.

When, however, the Bolderos declined her invitation for Thursday, and
were not at home to the bearer of her note--(although George vowed he
saw faces pee