ked as though her love of living would keep her busy each minute of
her day and all the minutes that she could occupy of everybody else's
days.

"Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace? Oh! how do you do? I've been meaning to come
and see you for quite a long time, but I know you're always so busy."

With doubting eyes, half friendly and half defensive, as though chaffing
to prevent herself from being chaffed, Cecilia looked at Mrs. Tallents
Smallpeace, whom she had met several times at Bianca's house. The widow
of a somewhat famous connoisseur, she was now secretary of the League
for Educating Orphans who have Lost both Parents, vice-president of
the Forlorn Hope for Maids in Peril, and treasurer to Thursday Hops
for Working Girls. She seemed to know every man and woman who was worth
knowing, and some besides; to see all picture-shows; to hear every new
musician; and attend the opening performance of every play. With regard
to literature, she would say that authors bored her; but she was always
doing them good turns, inviting them to meet their critics or editors,
and sometimes--though this was not generally known--pulling them out
of the holes they were prone to get into, by lending them a sum of
money--after which, as she would plaintively remark; she rarely saw them
more.

She had a peculiar spiritual significance to Mrs. Stephen Dallison,
being just on the borderline between those of Bianca's friends whom
Cecilia did not wish and those whom she did wish to come to her own
house, for Stephen, a barrister in an official position, had a keen
sense of the ridiculous. Since Hilary wrote books and was a poet, and
Bianca painted, their friends would naturally be either interesting or
queer; and though for Stephen's sake it was important to establish which
was which, they were so very often both. Such people stimulated,
taken in small doses, but neither on her husband's account nor on her
daughter's did Cecilia desire that they should come to her in swarms.
Her attitude of mind towards them was, in fact, similar-a sort of
pleasurable dread-to that in which she purchased the Westminster Gazette
to feel the pulse of social progress.

Mrs. Tallents Smallpeace's dark little eyes twinkled.

"I hear that Mr. Stone--that is your father's name, I think--is writing
a book which will create quite a sensation when it comes out."

Cecilia bit her lips. "I hope it never will come out," she was on the
point of saying.

"What will it be called