Davenport private car, to be elaborately entertained in San
Francisco, and to be prominent, naturally, in the island set. Little
Miss Bishop had just announced her engagement to Lord Donnyfare, a
splendid, big, clumsy, and impecunious young Briton who had made himself
very popular with the younger group this winter. They were to be
married in January and her ladyship would shortly afterward be
transferred to London society, presented at court, and placed as
mistress over the old family acres in Devonshire.

They were both nice girls, pretty, beautifully groomed and dressed, and
far from unintelligent as they discussed their plans; how their
favourite horses and dogs would be moved, and what instructions had been
given the maids who had preceded them to their respective homes. Katrina
Thayer was just twenty, Mary Bishop a year younger; Norma knew that the
former was perhaps the richest girl in America, and the latter was also
an heiress, the society papers having already hinted that among the
wedding gifts shortly to be displayed would be an uncle's casual check
for one million dollars.

"And of course it'll be charming for Chris, Mary," Annie presently said,
"if he's really sent to Saint James's."

Norma felt her throat thicken.

"Chris--to England--as Ambassador?" she said.

"Well, there's just a possibility--no, there's more than that!" Annie
told her. "I believe he'll take it, if it is offered. Of course, he's
supremely well fitted for it. There's even"--Annie threw out to the
company at large, with that air of being specially informed in which she
delighted--"there's even very good reason to suppose that influence has
been brought to bear by----But I don't dare go into that. However, we
feel that it will be offered. And the one serious drawback is naturally
my sister. Alice--poor child! And yet, of us all, Alice is most
desperately eager for Chris to take it."

"I should think," Norma said, "that Aunt Alice could almost be
moved----?"

"Oh, she would be!" Annie agreed, with her quick, superior definiteness.
"That's the very question. Whether the north Atlantic passage, say in
May, when it oughtn't to be so hard, would be too much for her. Of
course it would tire her and shake her cruelly, no doubt of that. But
Hendrick even talks of some sort of balanced bed--on the hammock
idea--and Miss Slater would see that everything that was humanly
possible was done. I believe it could be managed. Then she would be met