"Lots of swells. They flock. They live, you know, all round, and the
place is filled with all the smart people, all the fast people, those
whose names are in the papers--mamma has still The Morning Post--and who
come up for the season."

Mrs. Jordan took this in with complete intelligence. "Yes, and I dare
say it's some of your people that _I_ do."

Her companion assented, but discriminated. "I doubt if you 'do' them as
much as I! Their affairs, their appointments and arrangements, their
little games and secrets and vices--those things all pass before me."

This was a picture that could make a clergyman's widow not imperceptibly
gasp; it was in intention moreover something of a retort to the thousand
tulips. "Their vices? Have they got vices?"

Our young critic even more overtly stared then with a touch of contempt
in her amusement: "Haven't you found _that_ out?" The homes of luxury
then hadn't so much to give. "_I_ find out everything."

Mrs. Jordan, at bottom a very meek person, was visibly struck. "I see.
You do 'have' them."

"Oh I don't care! Much good it does me!"

Mrs. Jordan after an instant recovered her superiority. "No--it doesn't
lead to much." Her own initiations so clearly did. Still--after all;
and she was not jealous: "There must be a charm."

"In seeing them?" At this the girl suddenly let herself go. "I hate