iment, Miss Brown walked in, saying, "I
never heard of such an uproarious Sunday party. Are you ready, Ethel? We
ought to be off,"--which practically ended the meal, for first Mr. Ramsay
and then the others left the table, he to talk to Bijou, they to get ready
for church. Job's eyes followed Mr. Ramsay, and he said to Sir Robert,
"What a charming girl Mrs. De Witt was in the old Cheltenham days!
Heathcote didn't make the landing there, and I'm sorry."

"So am I. She is an immense favorite of mine," said Sir Robert. "As
charming as ever! It was a more serious thing than I thought it would be.
I doubt whether he ever marries."

"She was a born enchantress, Jenny was," he replied. "Some women are like
poison oak,--once get them in your system, and they will break out on you
every spring for fifty years, if you live that long, fresh and painful as
ever. But as for his marrying, some one of our girls will enter for the
Consolation stakes, very likely, and he will be married before he knows
what has hurt him."

"A consummation devoutly to be wished," said Sir Robert. "He is my heir,
you know."

In a few minutes Ethel joined Bijou, who looked at her rather hard, as she
felt. Ethel wore a simple serge dress, heavy boots, a stout frieze jacket,
and a hat of a shape unknown in America, that seemed to be all cocks'
plumes. Her eyes being weak, she had put on her smoked glasses. The day
being damp, and her chest delicate, she had added her respirator. "I am
nicely protected, am I not?" she said contentedly. "I had a severe cold
last winter, from which I am not quite recovered, and auntie thinks I had
best be prudent. Are you ready?"

"Not quite," said Bijou. "I want to see Mrs. Ketchum a moment." She ran
off, accordingly, into the library in search of the old lady, whom she
found there looking out the lessons, it being her practice to verify every
word the clergyman read, and no small satisfaction to catch him tripping.
"Do, Mrs. Ketchum, speak to Ethel and get her to take off those machines
and put on something stylish," said Bijou. "I am really ashamed to take
her into our pew; people will stare so. She is a perfect fright. The idea
of a girl making herself look like that!"

Mrs. Ketchum, however, declined to interfere, and when Bijou got back to
the drawing-room Ethel was missing. Taking advantage of Bijou's absence,
she had gone up-stairs, and, during the library interview, was saying to
her aunt, "You never saw anything