and, indeed, had a fine taste in literature, told herself suddenly that
Miss Brabazon was rather her idea of Jane Austen's Emma! Her dark-blue
velvet dress, though it set off her pretty skin, and the complexion
which was one of her best points, yet was absurdly old, for a girl.
Doubtless Miss Brabazon's gown had been designed by the same dressmaker
who had made her mother's presentation dress some thirty years before.
Such dressmakers are a quaint survival of the Victorian age, and to them
old-fashioned people keep on going from a sense of loyalty, or perhaps
because they are honestly ignorant of what strides in beauty and
elegance other dressmakers have made in the last quarter of a century.

The hostess's eye travelled slowly round the table. How ludicrous the
contrast between Helen Brabazon and Bubbles Dunster! Yet they were
probably very much of an age. Bubbles, who looked such a child, must now
be--yes, not far from two-and-twenty.

Miss Farrow checked a sigh. She had been twenty-one herself--but what a
charming, distinguished, delightful twenty-one--when she had formed one
of a little group round the font of St. Peter's, Eaton Square. She
remembered what an ugly baby she had thought Bubbles, and how she had
been anything but pleased when someone present facetiously observed that
god-mother and godchild had very much the same type of nose and ears and
mouth!

To-night Bubbles was wearing an eccentric, and yet very becoming
garment. To the uninitiated it might have appeared fashioned out of an
old-fashioned chintz curtain. As a matter of fact, the intricate flower
pattern with which it was covered had been copied on a Lyons loom from
one of those eighteenth century embroidered waistcoats which are rightly
prized by connoisseurs. The dress was cut daringly low, back and front,
especially back, and the girl wore no jewels. But through her "bobbed"
hair was tucked a brilliant little silk flag, which carried out and
emphasized the colouring of the flowers scattered over the pale pink
silk of which its wearer's gown was made.

Bubbles, in that staid and decorous company, looked as if she had
wandered in from some gay Venetian masquerade.

She was now sitting between the millionaire, James Tapster, and her own
friend, Bill Donnington. When she had heard that she had been placed
next Donnington, Bubbles had pouted. "I'd rather have had Sir Lyon," she
exclaimed, "or even the old 'un!"--for so she irreverently designat