. My three
offspring--Peter the third, Eleanor, and Bobby.... Will you please take
the children to the playroom now, Miss Burden?... Thank you!... Tea, Mr.
Dundee? Or shall I order you a highball?"

"Nothing, thanks," Dundee answered, grateful for her friendliness but
nonplussed by it. Not for the first time he felt a sick distaste for the
profession he had chosen....

"It's all over," Lois Dunlap said in a low voice, as the butler
retreated. "Lydia made her look very beautiful.... I thought it would be
rather horrible, having to see her, as the poor child requested in her
note to Lydia, but I'm glad now I did. She looked as sweet and young and
innocent as she must have been when she first wore the royal blue
velvet."

"I'm glad," Dundee said sincerely. Then he leaned toward her across the
tea table. "Mrs. Dunlap, will you please tell me just how you persuaded
Mrs. Selim to come to Hamilton--so far from Broadway?"

"Why certainly!" Lois Dunlap looked puzzled. "But it really did not take
much persuasion after I showed her some group photographs we had made
when we Forsyte girls put on 'The Beggar's Opera' here last October--a
benefit performance for the Forsyte Alumnae Scholarship fund."

With difficulty Dundee controlled his excitement. "May I see those
photographs, please?"

"I had to hunt quite a bit for them," his hostess apologized ten minutes
later, as she spread the glossy prints of half a dozen photographs for
Dundee's inspection. "Do you know 'The Beggar's Opera'?"

"John Gay--eighteenth century, isn't it?... As I remember it, it is
quite--" and Dundee hesitated, grinning.

"Bawdy?" Lois laughed. "Oh, very! We couldn't have got away with it if
it hadn't been a classic. As it was, we had to tone down some of the
naughtiest passages and songs. But it was lots of fun, and the boys
enjoyed it hugely because it gave them an opportunity to wear tight
satin breeches and lace ruffles.... This is my husband, Peter. He adored
being the highwayman, 'Robin of Bagshot'," and she pointed out a stocky,
belligerent-looking man near the end of the long row of costumed
players, in a photograph which showed the entire cast.

"You say that Mrs. Selim accepted your proposal _after_ she saw these
photographs?" Dundee asked. "Had she refused before?"

"Yes. I'd gone to New York for the annual Easter Play which the Forsyte
School puts on, because I'm intensely interested in semi-professional
theatricals," Lois explained. "N