r a verbal slip of Mrs. Hicks's, Nick had flushed to
the forehead and gone to bed swearing that he would chuck his job the
next day.

Two months had passed since then, and he was still the paid secretary.
He had contrived to let the aide-de-camp feel that he was too deficient
in humour to be worth exchanging glances with; but even this had not
restored his self-respect, and on the evening in question, as he looked
about the long table, he said to himself for the hundredth time that he
would give up his position on the morrow.

Only--what was the alternative? The alternative, apparently, was Coral
Hicks. He glanced down the line of diners, beginning with the tall lean
countenance of the Princess Mother, with its small inquisitive eyes
perched as high as attic windows under a frizzled thatch of hair and a
pediment of uncleaned diamonds; passed on to the vacuous and overfed
or fashionably haggard masks of the ladies next in rank; and finally
caught, between branching orchids, a distant glimpse of Miss Hicks.

In contrast with the others, he thought, she looked surprisingly noble.
Her large grave features made her appear like an old monument in a
street of Palace Hotels; and he marvelled at the mysterious law which
had brought this archaic face out of Apex City, and given to the oldest
society of Europe a look of such mixed modernity.

Lansing perceived that the aide-de-camp, who was his neighbour, was also
looking at Miss Hicks. His expression was serious, and even thoughtful;
but as his eyes met Lansing's he readjusted his official smile.

"I was admiring our hostess's daughter. Her absence of jewels is--er--an
inspiration," he remarked in the confidential tone which Lansing had
come to dread.

"Oh, Miss Hicks is full of inspirations," he returned curtly, and the
aide-de-camp bowed with an admiring air, as if inspirations were rarer
than pearls, as in his milieu they undoubtedly were. "She is the equal
of any situation, I am sure," he replied; and then abandoned the subject
with one of his automatic transitions.

After dinner, in the embrasure of a drawing-room window, he surprised
Nick by returning to the same topic, and this time without thinking it
needful to readjust his smile. His face remained serious, though his
manner was studiously informal.

"I was admiring, at dinner, Miss Hicks's invariable sense of
appropriateness. It must permit her friends to foresee for her almost
any future, however exalted."