n clothes and preposterously
at work on women's tasks. She adored the clergy for their pious humours,
the bench for its delicious attempts at dignity, the bar for its
grotesque travesties of passionate conviction--lies with their wigs
on--the world political for its intrigues dressed up in patriotism.
A Lord Chancellor in full state seemed to her the most delightfully
ridiculous phenomenon in a delightfully ridiculous universe. And she had
once been obliged to make a convulsive exit from an English cathedral,
in which one hundred colonial bishops were singing a solemn hymn,
entirely devastated by the laughter waked in her by this most sacred
spectacle.

Miss Burns, who hurried in breathlessly ten minutes late, was very thin,
badly dressed and insignificant-looking, wore her hair short, and could
not see you if you were more than four feet away from her. She had been
on various lonely and distant travelling excursions, about which she had
written books, had consorted merrily with naked savages, sat in the oily
huts of Esquimaux, and penetrated into the interior of China dressed as
a man. Her lack of affectation hit you in the face on a first meeting,
and her sincerity was perpetually embroiling her with the persistent
liars who, massed together, formed what is called decent society.

"I know I'm late," she said, pushing her round black hat askew on her
shaggy little head. "I know I've kept you all waiting. Pardon!"

"Indeed you haven't," replied Mrs. Wolfstein. "Pimpernel Schley isn't
here yet. She lives in the hotel, so of course she'll turn up last."

Mrs. Trent put one hand on her hip and stared insolently at the various
groups of people in the court, Lady Cardington sighed, and Lady Holme
assumed a vacant look, which suited her mental attitude at the moment.
She generally began to feel rather vacant if she were long alone with
women.

Another ten minutes passed.

"I'm famishing," said Sally Perceval. "I've been at the Bath Club
diving, and I do so want my grub. Let's skip in."

"It really is too bad--oh, here she comes!" said Mrs. Wolfstein.

Many heads in the Palm Court were turned towards the stairs, down which
a demure figure was walking with extreme slowness. The big young man
with the round face got up from his chair and looked greedy, and
the waiters standing by the desk just inside the door glanced round,
whispered, and smiled quickly before gliding off to their different
little tables.

Pimpernel S