relief," her ladyship said to her nephew afterward. "So many women are
affected cats. She'll go out and buy you a box of pills or a porous
plaster, but at the same time she has a kind of simplicity and freedom
from spites and envies which might be the natural thing for a princess."

So it happened that occasionally Emily put on her best dress and most
carefully built hat and went to South Audley Street to tea. (Sometimes
she had previously gone in buses to some remote place in the City to buy
a special tea of which there had been rumours.) She met some very smart
people and rarely any stupid ones, Lady Maria being incased in a
perfect, frank armour of good-humoured selfishness, which would have
been capable of burning dulness at the stake.

"I won't have dull people," she used to say. "I'm dull myself."

When Emily Fox-Seton went to her on the morning in which this story
opens, she found her consulting her visiting-book and making lists.

"I'm arranging my parties for Mallowe," she said rather crossly. "How
tiresome it is! The people one wants at the same time are always nailed
to the opposite ends of the earth. And then things are found out about
people, and one can't have them till it's blown over. Those ridiculous
Dexters! They were the nicest possible pair--both of them good-looking
and both of them ready to flirt with anybody. But there was too much
flirting, I suppose. Good heavens! if I couldn't have a scandal and keep
it quiet, I wouldn't have a scandal at all. Come and help me, Emily."

Emily sat down beside her.

"You see, it is my early August party," said her ladyship, rubbing her