ood-natured; he'll take whoever is left."

"Well, then--Nannie," said Phil, in a martyrlike tone. "Ben can escort
the comic valentine."

"Oh, I say, Bently," exclaimed his friend, "you needn't talk about
the girl that way! She can't help being so plain!"

"That's so. It's brutal of me, and I'm sorry I said that. But she
might at least be jolly," answered Phil. "You wouldn't want to take a
girl that wasn't even--"

Alida did not hear the rest of the sentence. The moment that she
realised they were talking about her, she had begun to struggle into
her coat in order to leave. Without looking into the mirror,--her eyes
were too full of tears to see, even if she had done so,--she pinned on
her hat and hurried out into the hall. The coupe had just drawn up at
the curbstone, and with a curt order to the coachman to drive home as
rapidly as possible, she sank down on the cushions, shrinking back
from the carriage windows.

Mortified by the cruelly careless speech that she had overheard, she
gave herself up to an uncontrollable fit of crying. "I know that I've
always been uh-uh-ugly," she sobbed, "but I never knew before that
people felt and talked that way about me! I'll never show my face
outside of the house again, and Ben Fuller shall certainly be spared
the mortification of escorting a 'comic valentine' to Mrs.
Lancaster's party. Oh, I would rather be dead than so homely and
unattractive!"

She was still sobbing when she reached the house, and stood shivering
on the steps in the chill February wind while she waited for the front
door to open. A cheerful wood fire blazed in the fireplace in the wide
reception hall. A bowl of hothouse violets greeted her with their
fragrant springlike odour; but heedless of the luxurious warmth and
cheer that pervaded the house, she hurried up-stairs, with the gloom
of the cloudy winter day in her tear-stained face.

"Lunch is served, Miss Alida," said the maid, meeting her in the upper
hall.

"Tell mamma that I don't want any," she answered, passing into her own
room. "I'm going to lie down. My head aches, and I do not wish to be
disturbed by any one."

A slight expression of annoyance crossed Mrs. Gooding's handsome face.
She and May were alone at lunch, and when the servant had left the
room she said impatiently to May: "I particularly wanted Alida to go
out with us this afternoon to call on Mrs. Lancaster's guest. She
takes so little interest in people outside the family, and