r. Nellie's friends are our friends and we've heard so much of
Ned Hawkins that we seem to have known you a long while." He held out his
hand and shook Ned's warmly, giving a strong, clinging, friendly grip,
not waiting for any introduction. "Of course, this is Mr. Hawkins,
Nellie?" he enquired, seriously, turning to that young woman, whose hands
he took in both of his while looking quizzingly from Ned to her and back
to Ned again.

"Yes, of course," she answered, laughing. Ned laughed. The possible
conspirator laughed as he answered, dropping her hands and turning to
shut the door.

"Well, it mightn't have been. By the way, Nellie, you must have sent an
astral warning that you were coming along. We were just talking about
you."

* * * * *

They had been discussing Nellie in the Stratton circle, as our best
friends will when we are so fortunate as to interest them.

In the pretty sitting-room that overlooked the rippling water, Mrs.
Stratton perched on the music stool, was giving, amid many interjections,
an animated account of the opera: a dark-haired, grey-eyed, full-lipped
woman of 30 or so, with decidedly large nose and broad rounded forehead,
somewhat under the medium height apparently but pleasingly plump as her
evening dress disclosed. She talked rapidly, in a sweet expressive voice
that had a strange charm. Her audience consisted of an ugly little man,
with greyish hair, who stood at a bookcase in the corner and made his
remarks over his shoulder; a gloomy young man, who sat in a reclining
chair, with his arm hanging listlessly by his side; and a tall
dark-moustached handsome man, broadly built, who sat on the edge of a
table smoking a wooden pipe, and who, from his observations, had
evidently accompanied her home from the theatre after the second act.
There was also her husband, who leant over her, his back turned to the
others, unhooking her fur-edged opera cloak, a tall fair brown bearded
man, evidently the elder by some years, whose blue eyes were half hidden
beneath a strongly projected forehead. He fumbled with the hooks of the
cloak, passing his hands beneath it, smiling slyly at her the while. She,
flushing like a girl at the touch, talked away while pressing her knee
responsively against his. It was a little love scene being enacted of
which the others were all unconscious unless for a general impression
that this long-married couple were as foolishly in love as ever and
indulged still in all the