CHAPTER IV.

LADY THEOBALD.


"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed nervously, "there is Lady Theobald."

Lady Theobald, having been making calls of state, was returning home
rather later than usual, when, in driving up High Street, her eye fell
upon Miss Bassett's garden. She put up her eyeglasses, and gazed through
them severely; then she issued a mandate to her coachman.

"Dobson," she said, "drive more slowly."

She could not believe the evidence of her own eyeglasses. In Miss
Bassett's garden she saw a tall girl, "dressed," as she put it, "like an
actress," her delicate dress trailing upon the grass, a white lace scarf
about her head and shoulders, roses in that scarf, roses at her waist.

"Good heavens!" she exclaimed: "is Belinda Bassett giving a party,
without so much as mentioning it to _me_?"

Then she issued another mandate.

"Dobson," she said, "drive faster, and drive me to Miss Bassett's."

Miss Belinda came out to the gate to meet her, quaking inwardly. Octavia