t, under the
circumstances, Masherville is really about the best thing you could do.
You'll find him quite easy to manage!" This with an air as though she
were recommending a quiet pony.

"That's so!" said Marcia carelessly, "I guess we'll pull together
somehow. Mar-ma," to her mother--"yew kin turn on the news to all the
folks yew meet--the more talk the better! I'm not partial to secrets!"
And with a laugh, she turned away.

Then Mrs. Van Clupp laid her plump, diamond-ringed hand on that of her
dear friend, Mrs. Marvelle.

"You have managed the whole thing beautifully," she said, with a
grateful heave of her ample bosom. "Such a clever creature as you are!"
She dropped her voice to a mysterious whisper. "You shall have that
cheque to-morrow, my love!"

Mrs. Rush-Marvelle pressed her fingers cordially.

"Don't hurry yourself about it!"--she returned in the same confidential
tone. "I dare say you'll want me to arrange the wedding and the 'crush'
afterwards. I can wait till then."

"No, no! that's a separate affair," declared Mrs. Van Clupp. "I must
insist on your taking the promised two hundred. You've been really so
_very_ energetic!"

"Well, I _have_ worked rather hard," said Mrs. Marvelle, with modest
self-consciousness. "You see nowadays it's so difficult to secure
suitable husbands for the girls who ought to have them. Men _are_ such
slippery creatures!"

She sighed--and Mrs. Van Clupp echoed the sigh,--and then these two
ladies,--the nature of whose intimacy may now be understood by the
discriminating reader,--went together to search out those of their
friends and acquaintances who were among the guests that night, and to
announce to them (in the strictest confidence, of course!) the
delightful news of "dear Marcia's engagement." Thelma heard of it, and
went at once to proffer her congratulations to Marcia in person.

"I hope you will be very, very happy!" she said simply, yet with such
grave earnestness in her look and voice that the "Yankee gel" was
touched to a certain softness and seriousness not at all usual with her,
and became so winning and gentle to Lord Algy that he felt in the
seventh heaven of delight with his new position as affianced lover to so
charming a creature.

Meanwhile George Lorimer and Pierre Duprez were chatting together in the
library. It was very quiet there,--the goodly rows of books, the busts
of poets and philosophers,--the large, placid features of the Pallas
Athene cro