on the night, and ask the Shalem woman and all her crowd. It will be
awful fun."

Cicely caught at the suggestion with some enthusiasm. She did not
particularly care for Lady Shalem, but she thought it would be just as
well to care for her as far as outward appearances went.

Grace, Lady Shalem, was a woman who had blossomed into sudden importance
by constituting herself a sort of foster-mother to the fait accompli. At
a moment when London was denuded of most of its aforetime social leaders
she had seen her opportunity, and made the most of it. She had not
contented herself with bowing to the inevitable, she had stretched out
her hand to it, and forced herself to smile graciously at it, and her
polite attentions had been reciprocated. Lady Shalem, without being a
beauty or a wit, or a grand lady in the traditional sense of the word,
was in a fair way to becoming a power in the land; others, more capable
and with stronger claims to social recognition, would doubtless
overshadow her and displace her in due course, but for the moment she was
a person whose good graces counted for something, and Cicely was quite
alive to the advantage of being in those good graces.

"It would be rather fun," she said, running over in her mind the
possibilities of the suggested supper-party.

"It would be jolly useful," put in Ronnie eagerly; "you could get all
sorts of interesting people together, and it would be an excellent
advertisement for Gorla."

Ronnie approved of supper-parties on principle, but he was also thinking
of the advantage which might accrue to the drawing-room concert which