ous longing, that has a strange pleasure in it, to
stretch out her arms and sigh deeply and contentedly.

"Sit in this chair, and rest a little before thinking of taking off
anything else," says Dulce; "I shall pour out your tea."

She goes, with the quick undulating step that belongs to her, to a
small, round table, and makes a little fuss over the delicate fat little
cups that stand on the tray.

"You take sugar?" she asks, in a moment or two.

"No, thank you," says Portia, slowly; she is looking at her cousin
still, whose hair is as nearly red as it can be, without being exactly
so; it comes very, very close to it, but it is only the rude who have
ever called it so.

"But of course not," says Dulcinea. "One might know that by looking at
you. It isn't a good thing to take sugar in one's tea nowadays, is
it?--it almost touches on immorality;" she is standing with the
sugar-tongs poised in her right hand, and is glancing at Portia over her
shoulder. "_I_ take it, you know--any amount of it, and I have yet the
grace to be ashamed of myself afresh, at every new lump. Dicky Browne
likes it, too."

"Who _is_ Dicky Browne?" demands Portia, suddenly: if she is going to
live in this rather mixed household, she had better learn some
particulars about the inhabitants at once.

"Not know Dicky? it argues yourself unknown. He is our celebrity. He is
really immensely clever, about always doing the wrong thing, and indeed
is inestimable in most ways. He is your cousin, too, as much as he is
mine, which really," declares she airily, "isn't much. But he is such a
pet all through that we magnify the third-cousinship into a first. He
rides very straight and smokes the very prettiest cigarettes, and he is
_such_ a fool!"

Miss Vibart is amused. "What a very charming description," she says,
with the low laugh she allows herself; "he sounds like something I have
seen somewhere, and he certainly would be a treasure to Byron."

"Lord Byron?" asks Dulce, with lifted brows; "I don't myself think he
would show off much as a Conrad, or a Giaour, or a Lara."

"I rather fancy I was thinking of the man who writes plays," says Miss
Vibart, mildly. "Is he here now?"

"Yes. He spends most of his time here. Both he and Roger are consumed
with a desire to see you. You must know," says Dulcinea, laughing over
her cups at her cousin, "that a breath from the outer world came to us,
whispering of your success in town, and how every one raves of