well make a clean breast of it, first as last," said
Hoskins. "I thought perhaps Mrs. Elmore might refuse, she's so stiff
about some things,"--here he gave that chuckle of his,--"and so I came
prepared for contingencies. It occurred to me that it mightn't be quite
the thing, and so I went round to the Spanish consul and asked him how
he thought it would do for me to matronize a young lady if I could get
one, and he said he didn't think it would do at all." Hoskins let this
adverse decision sink into the breasts of his listeners before he added:
"But he said that he was going with his wife, and that if we would come
along she could matronize us both. I don't know how it would work," he
concluded impartially.

They all looked at Elmore, who stood holding the princess's missive in
his hand, and darkly forecasting the chances of consent and denial. At
the first suggestion of the matter, a reckless hope that this ball might
bring Ehrhardt above their horizon again sprang up in his heart, and
became a desperate fear when the whole responsibility of action was, as
usual, left with him. He stood, feeling that Hoskins had used him very
ill.

"I suppose," began Mrs. Elmore very thoughtfully, "that this will be
something quite in the style of the old masquerades under the Republic."

"Regular Ridotto business, the Spanish consul says," answered Hoskins.

"It might be very useful to you, Owen," she resumed, "in an historical
way, if Lily were to go and take notes of everything; so that when you
came to that period you could describe its corruptions intelligently."

Elmore laughed. "I never thought of that, my dear," he said, returning
the invitation to Hoskins. "Your historical sense has been awakened
late, but it promises to be very active. Lily had better go, by all
means, and I shall depend upon her coming home with very full notes upon
her dance-list."

They laughed at the professor's sarcasm, and Hoskins, having undertaken
to see that the last claims of etiquette were satisfied by getting an
invitation sent to Miss Mayhew through the Spanish consul, went off, and
left the ladies to the discussion of ways and means. Mrs. Elmore said
that of course it was now too late to hope to get anything done, and
then set herself to devise the character that Lily would have appeared
in if there had been time to get her ready, or if all the work-people
had not been so busy that it was merely frantic to think of anything.
She first pat