ss of Miss
Livingstone's desire to be informed.

Hilda knocked the ash of her cigarette into her finger-bowl, and waited.
The pause grew so stiff with embarrassment that she broke it herself.

"And I regret to say it was I who introduced them," she said.

"Introduced whom?"

"Mr. Lindsay and Miss Laura Filbert of the Salvation Army. They met at
Number Three; she had come after my soul. I think she was disappointed,"
Hilda went on tranquilly, "because I would only lend it to her while she
was there."

"Of the Salvation Army! I can't imagine why you should regret it. He is
always grateful to be amused."

"Oh, there is no reason to doubt his gratitude. He is rather intense
about it. And--I don't know that my regret is precisely on Mr. Lindsay's
account. Did I say so?" They were simple, amiable words, and
their pertinence was very far from insistent; but Alicia's crude
blush--everything else about her was so perfectly worked out--cried
aloud that it was too sharp a pull up. "Perhaps though," Hilda hurried
on with a pang, "we generalise too much about the men."

What Miss Livingstone would have found to say--she had certainly no
generalisation to offer about Duff Lindsay--had not a servant brought
her a card at that moment, is embarrassing to consider. The card saved
her the necessity. She looked at it blankly for an instant, and then
exclaimed, "My cousin, Stephen Arnold! He's a reverend--a Clarke Mission
priest, and he will come straight in here. What shall we do with our
cigarettes?"

Miss Howe had a pleasurable sense that the situation was developing.

"Yours has gone out again, so it doesn't much matter, does it? Drown
the corpse in here, and I'll pretend it belongs to me." She pushed
the finger-bowl across, and Alicia's discouraged remnant went into it.
"Don't ask me to sacrifice mine," she added, and there was no time for
remonstrance; Arnold's voice was lifting itself at the door.

"Pray may I come in?" he called from behind the portiere.

Hilda, who sat with her back to it, smiled in enjoying recognition of
the thin, high academic note, the prim finish of the inflection. It
reminded her of a man she knew who "did" curates beautifully.

Arnold walked past her with his quick, humble, clerical gait, and it
amused her to think that he bent over Alicia's hand as if he would bless
it.

"You can't guess how badly I want a cup of coffee." He flavoured what he
said, and made it pretty, like a woman. "Let me c