turned slowly and looked at him as she asked:

"You mean that I would not have gone if you had?"

He did not seem annoyed.

"No," he said, "that I'm called South on business."

"I shan't tell them that," she said, slowly wrapping her furs about her
throat; and then foreseeing a comic moment, she added, "but I'll tell
them you say so, if you like."

She was as good as her word--she usually was.

When the party was at tea about the drawing-room fire, she asked without
the slightest change of expression:

"Would any one like to hear Roland's explanation of why he is not with
us?"

"Had it anything to do with his not being asked?" said a pale young man;
and as soon as he had spoken, he glanced hastily round the circle to
ascertain how his remark had succeeded.

So far as Mrs. Almar was concerned it had not succeeded at all, in fact,
though he did not know it, nothing he said would ever succeed with her
again, although a week before she had hung upon his every word. He had
been a new discovery, something unknown and Bohemian, but alas, a day or
two before, she had observed that underlying his socialistic theories was
an aching desire for social recognition. He liked to tell his bejeweled