ra's shoulder. "Won't it, Cleo dear?"

Cleopatra darted up, saw that her mother was too much engaged greeting
the party from the Park to notice her disappearance, and made rapidly
towards the house.

"Isn't Cleo well?" Miss Mallowcoid demanded, her eyebrows high up in her
fringe with indignant surprise.

"It surely isn't as bad as all that!" ejaculated the unfortunate widow.
"Do you notice it too?"

"It certainly is very noticeable, I should have thought," Vanessa
remarked.

Mrs. Delarayne then begged the young Jewess to find out what Cleopatra
was doing, and to persuade her if possible to lie down. She thereupon
conducted her guests to a small marquee where tea was laid, and called
to the tennis-players to join them.

In a moment Vanessa returned.

"She doesn't want me," she exclaimed. "She says she wants to be alone."

"But isn't she going to have any tea?" cried Mrs. Delarayne shrilly.

"Later on, she said," the Jewess replied.

"How full of caprice these young things are!" interjected Miss
Mallowcoid. "Why, she did not even wish us good-day!"

"The truth is," said Mrs. Delarayne, "Cleo hates being ill, and probably
wished to avoid being asked questions."

"Oh, how natural that is!" Mrs. Tribe observed, glancing half fearfully
at Miss Mallowcoid.

"You've made this place look very pretty," said Sir Joseph, smiling
unctuously at his hostess; "charming, charming! A perfect setting for
a--for a precious----"

"Here, you want some refreshment," snapped Miss Mallowcoid gruffly.
"Edith, where's Sir Joseph's cup?"

Sir Joseph laughed a little boisterously, and the tennis players
arrived.

"Where's Cleo?" was Leonetta's first question. She looked hot and
excited, but extremely happy.

Miss Mallowcoid explained that Cleo was in one of her "precious" moods,
as she put it. She had never been a great favourite with her nieces, and
since the fuel of affection is so largely a distillation of vanity, she
did not feel much love towards them. Her remark, however, succeeded in
making Mrs. Delarayne fill Sir Joseph's saucer with tea.

"That's not kind," said the widow, glaring first at her sister and then
at Denis. "Cleo, I'm afraid, is not very well."

"The heat perhaps," lisped the Incandescent Gerald.

"And other things," added Agatha, in her quiet, eloquent way.

Her brother Stephen stared perplexedly at her for some seconds, and then
looked round the party with an air of utter bewilderment.

"Ah, these