aris. My old mademoiselle is married there to a
flourishing poet, I believe--perhaps she would take me as a paying guest
for a little."

"That is very visionary--a French poet! Horrible, long-haired, frowsy
creature! Impossible! Surely you see how necessary it is for you to marry
Christopher as soon as you can, Evangeline, don't you?" she said, and I
was obliged to admit there were reasons.

"The truth is, you can't be the least eccentric or unconventional if you
are good-looking and unmarried," she continued. "You may snap your fingers
at society, but if you do you won't have a good time, and all the men will
either foolishly champion you or be impertinent to you."

"Oh, I realize it," I said, and there was a lump in my throat.

"I shall write to Christopher to-morrow," she went on, "and thank him for
our outing last night, and I shall say something nice about you and your
loneliness, and that he, as a kind of relation, may go and see you on
Sunday, as long as he doesn't make love to you, and he can take you to the
Zoo--don't see him in your sitting-room. That will give him just the extra
fillip, and he will go, and you will be demure, and then by those
stimulating lions' and tigers' cages you can plight your troth. It will be
quite respectable. Wire to me at once on Monday to Sedgwick, and you must
come back to Park Street directly I return on Thursday, if it is all
settled."

I thanked her as well as I could. She was quite ingenuous and quite
sincere. I should be a welcome guest as Christopher's fiancee, and there
was no use my feeling bitter about it--she was quite right.

As I put my hand on Malcolm's skinny arm going down to the dining-room,
the only consolation was my fate had not got to be him. I would rather be
anything in the world than married to that!

I tried to be agreeable to Sir Charles. We were only a party of six. An
old Miss Harpenden, who goes everywhere to play bridge, and Malcolm, and
one of Lady Ver's young men, and I. Sir Charles is absent, and brings
himself back. He fiddles with the knives and forks, and sprawls on the
table rather, too. He looks at Lady Ver with admiration in his eyes. It is
true, then, in the intervals of Paris, I suppose, she can make his heart
beat.

Malcolm made love to me after dinner. We were left to talk when the others
sat down to bridge in the little drawing-room.

"I missed you so terribly, Miss Travers," he said, priggishly, "when you
left us that I realiz