throwing an orange at her brother. There was one lying ready to her
hand, and his glistening shirt-front offered an admirable mark; but she
restrained herself. After all, if a hostess yields to her primitive
impulses, what happens? Chaos. She had just frowned down the exuberance
of the rebellious Murphys, and she felt that if, even with the highest
motives, she began throwing fruit, her influence for good in that
quarter would be weakened.

She leaned back with a sigh. The temptation had been hard to resist. A
democratic girl, pomposity was a quality which she thoroughly disliked;
and though she loved him, she could not disguise from herself that, ever
since affluence had descended upon him some months ago, her brother
Fillmore had become insufferably pompous. If there are any young men
whom inherited wealth improves, Fillmore Nicholas was not one of them.
He seemed to regard himself nowadays as a sort of Man of Destiny. To
converse with him was for the ordinary human being like being received
in audience by some more than stand-offish monarch. It had taken Sally
over an hour to persuade him to leave his apartment on Riverside Drive
and revisit the boarding-house for this special occasion; and, when he
had come, he had entered wearing such faultless evening dress that he
had made the rest of the party look like a gathering of tramp-cyclists.
His white waistcoat alone was a silent reproach to honest poverty, and
had caused an awkward constraint right through the soup and fish
courses. Most of those present had known Fillmore Nicholas as an
impecunious young man who could make a tweed suit last longer than one
would have believed possible; they had called him "Fill" and helped him
in more than usually lean times with small loans: but to-night they had
eyed the waistcoat dumbly and shrank back abashed.

"Speaking," said Mr. Faucitt, "as an Englishman--for though I have long