s, such as satin and too flamboyant
ties, not to be even mentally criticised.

"But it is true, my dear," continued Joyselle, the mischief suddenly
gone from his face, a shrewd look of inquiry taking its place. "You are
going to marry into a peasant family, you know." Another change of mood!
He was severe now and disapproving.

She held up her head. "No one could call Theo a peasant, could they,
Duchess?"

Joyselle understood, and with bewildering rapidity again changed.
"Bravo!" he cried, laughing heartily. "You are marrying the _son_, you
mean, not the father. _C'est vrai, c'est vrai!_"

His utter unconsciousness was a great blessing, no doubt, but at that
moment it nearly maddened her. Was he blind?

Apparently he was, as he drank some mineral water and talked to the
Duchess.

The arrival of Lady Brinsley's poor dear Mr. Smith, the vicar, was the
next mild event of the day, and as his head too was filled with coals
and blankets, the story of the abominable coal-dealer had again to be
listened to and lamented over.

"The very worst coals I ever saw in my life, positively, are they not,
Lady Brinsley?"

"Eh, yes, Mr. Smith, quite too shocking. Nothing but dust, Duchess,
positively."

"We are all dust," returned the Duchess, who was whispering to Joyselle
about the Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine, _dans le temps_. "Oh, no,
we are all worms, aren't we?"

"Positively, I _never_ saw such very inferior coals," went on the Vicar,
wondering what on earth she was talking about.

Brigit looked at him as he babbled on. He was a very thin man, who
always reminded her of a plucked bird. Soon he would ask her why he had
not had the pleasure of seeing her in church for so long. He would hope
that she had not had a cold.

He did both these things, poor man, for it was his _role_ in life always
to say and do the perniciously obvious.

It was a very trying hour, but at last, under the dutiful pretext of
going to look after her mother, Brigit escaped and flew to Tommy's room.

It was a strange apartment for a little boy, for it had been assigned to
him once when he was ill, as being sunny, and beyond his brass bedstead
and small boy hoards, contained nothing whatever that looked as if it
belonged to one of few years.

For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century
furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in
tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, pres