re already so well provided for?" Mrs. Fisher flashed a sharp glance
at her. "ARE you, though, Lily--to the point of rejecting my offer?"

Miss Bart coloured slowly. "What I really meant was, that the Brys
wouldn't in the least care to be so disposed of."

Mrs. Fisher continued to probe her embarrassment with an unflinching eye.
"What you really meant was that you've snubbed the Brys horribly; and you
know that they know----"

"Carry!"

"Oh, on certain sides Louisa bristles with perceptions. If you'd even
managed to have them asked once on the Sabrina--especially when royalties
were coming! But it's not too late," she ended earnestly, "it's not too
late for either of you."

Lily smiled. "Stay over, and I'll get the Duchess to dine with them."

"I shan't stay over--the Gormers have paid for my SALON-LIT," said Mrs.
Fisher with simplicity. "But get the Duchess to dine with them all the
same."

Lily's smile again flowed into a slight laugh: her friend's importunity
was beginning to strike her as irrelevant. "I'm sorry I have been
negligent about the Brys----" she began.

"Oh, as to the Brys--it's you I'm thinking of," said Mrs. Fisher
abruptly. She paused, and then, bending forward, with a lowered voice:
"You know we all went on to Nice last night when the Duchess chucked us.
It was Louisa's idea--I told her what I thought of it."

Miss Bart assented. "Yes--I caught sight of you on the way back, at the
station."

"Well, the man who was in the carriage with you and George Dorset--that
horrid little Dabham who does 'Society Notes from the Riviera'--had been
dining with us at Nice. And he's telling everybody that you and Dorset
came back alone after midnight."

"Alone--? When he was with us?" Lily laughed, but her laugh faded into
gravity under the prolonged implication of Mrs. Fisher's look. "We DID
come back alone--if that's so very dreadful! But whose fault was it? The
Duchess was spending the night at Cimiez with the Crown Princess; Bertha
got bored with the show, and went off early, promising to meet us at the
station. We turned up on time, but she didn't--she didn't turn up at all!"

Miss Bart made this announcement in the tone of one who presents, with
careless assurance, a complete vindication; but Mrs. Fisher received it
in a manner almost inconsequent. She seemed to have lost sight of her
friend's part in the incident: her inward vision had taken another slant.

"Bertha never turned up at all? Then h