the thought that they cared for her. She did not know
the lamentable, vulgar fact that any woman can be a flirt if she only
degrade her womanhood to flattery. Men do not want to love so much as to
be loved. Such is, moreover, their sublime vanity that they are ready to
believe any one who tells them, however subtly--mesdames, you cannot be
too subtle for a man's vanity to find your meaning--that they are not as
other men.

To the commonplace observer it would, therefore, appear (erroneously,
no doubt) that the broken hearts having been practically assured that
Millicent Chyne did not care for them, promptly made the discovery that
the lack of feeling was reciprocal. But Millicent did not, of course,
adopt this theory. She knew better. She only wondered why several young
men did not communicate, and she was slightly uneasy lest in their anger
they should do or say something indiscreet.

There was no reason why the young people should wait. And when there is
no reason why the young people should wait, there is every reason why
they should not do so. Thus it came about that in a week or so Millicent
was engaged in the happiest pursuit of her life. She was buying clothes
without a thought of money. The full joy of the trousseau was hers. The
wives of her guardians having been morally bought, dirt cheap, at
the price of an anticipatory invitation to the wedding, those elderly
gentlemen were with little difficulty won over to a pretty little
femininely vague scheme of withdrawing just a little of the
capital--said capital to be spent in the purchase of a really GOOD
trousseau, you know. The word "good" emanating from such a source must,
of course, be read as "novel," which in some circles means the same
thing.

Millicent entered into the thing in the right spirit. Whatever the
future might hold for her--and she trusted that it might be full of
millinery--she was determined to enjoy the living present to its utmost.
Her life at this time was a whirl of excitement--excitement of the
keenest order--namely, trying on.

"You do not know what it is," she said, with a happy little sigh, to
those among her friends who probably never would, "to stand the whole
day long being pinned into linings by Madame Videpoche."

And despite the sigh, she did it with an angelic sweetness of temper
which quite touched the heart of Madame Videpoche, while making no
difference in the bill.

Lady Cantourne would not have been human had she ass