er night. David understood
thoroughly; there was no reason for her to apologize, and, of course,
he would come again. Penelope was immensely relieved to find him so
complacent; she even wished he were to be of the company to which she
was going. She had just come in to have a glimpse of him, and now she
must be hurrying. And so she went away to take her bright place in
that social firmament of which the abandoned Mr. Malcolm thought with
so much envy and longing while he dallied again with sweetbreads and
peas.

"It was very late when I got home," said Mrs. Bannister, taking up the
thread of her narrative, "and who should I find here, as usual, but
Herbert Talcott!"

The emphasis which she put on the words "as usual" aroused Mr. Blight
from his placid interest in his glass of claret. "And who," said he,
"is Talcott, anyway? What does he do?"

"Herbert Talcott is a remarkable man," replied Mrs. Bannister. "He
does nothing."

It should have mattered little to me that Herbert Talcott refused tea
from Penelope's hands every day of the week because he had just come
from the club. Had Mrs. Bannister announced that he was calling daily
on Gladys Todd, then I should very properly have been startled. Yet I
sat up straight now as though she had named an archenemy of my
happiness and my ears were keen to hear every word.

"He does absolutely nothing," she continued. "He has absolutely
nothing, in spite of the reports that he is quite well off. I know
positively that his father left him only ten thousand a year, and yet
he knows everybody and goes everywhere. He is undeniably clever and
was a great favorite at Harvard."

"Doesn't he work at all?" said Mr. Blight with a rising inflection of
astonishment.

"Why, no," replied Mrs. Bannister. She saw the disapproval in my
host's face and was quick to bring herself into sympathy. "That is
what I can't understand. Now, there is Bob Grant, who is very rich in
his own right, and yet goes religiously down to the Stock Exchange
every day because he feels an obligation to be of some use in the
world. But of the two men, Herbert Talcott is the more sought after."

"Sought after?" said my host inquiringly.

"Yes, sought after," repeated Mrs. Bannister. "He is asked everywhere.
I suppose his name has something to do with it, but in these days, when
name counts for so little and money for so much, it is remarkable."

"It is remarkable," said Rufus Blight, with a retu