y inspecting some newly arrived lingerie, did not
glance up as she answered: "Don't be silly. You know it's a relief.
You can sit back and rest from now on--until I'm divorced," she added
with a smile.

"How can you even say such a thing?"

Beatrice tossed the filmy creamy silk somethings or other away and
delivered herself of her mind. "Alice Twill was divorced before she
married this specimen; so was Coralie Minter; and Harold Atwater; and
both the Deralto girls were divorced, and their mother, too. And Jill
Briggs is considering it, and I'm sure I don't blame her. Everyone
seems to think a divorce quite the proper caper when things grow dull.
You may as well have all the fun you can. Steve wants me to have
everything I fancy, and I'm sure he'd never deny me a divorce."

"You are marrying a splendid, self-made young man who adores you and
who is making money every day in the week. No girl is to be more
envied--you have had a wonderful ten years of being a 'Gorgeous Girl,'
as your dear papa calls it, and at twenty-six you are to become the
bride of a wonderful man--neither too early nor too late an age. I
cannot really grieve--when I realize how happy you are going to be,
and yet----"

"Don't work so hard, aunty," Bea said, easily. "Of course Steve's a
wonderful old dear and all that--I wish I had asked him for the moon.
I do believe he'd have gotten an option on it." She laughed and
reached over to a bonbon dish to rummage for a favourite flavour. She
selected a fat, deadly looking affair, only to bite into it and
discover her mistake. She tossed it on the floor so that Monster could
creep out of her silk-lined basket and devour the remains.

"If you call natural feelings of a mother and an aunt 'working hard' I
am at a loss----" her aunt began with attempted indignation.

"Oh, I don't call anything anything; I'm dead and almost buried." She
looked at her small self in the pier glass. "Think of all I have to go
through with before it is over and we are on our way west. Here it is
half-past twelve and I've not eaten breakfast really. I'm so tired of
presents and bored with clothes that I cannot acknowledge another
thing or decide anything. I think weddings are a frightful ordeal. Did
you know the women on my war-relief committee presented me with a
silver jewel box? Lovely of them, wasn't it? But I deserve it--after
slaving all last winter. My bronchitis was just because I sold tags
for them during that rainy we