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she had seen furious fine ladies turn away ticketless); and Adele Anthony was exhilarated by the nearness of people she did not know, or wish to know, but with whose names and private histories she was minutely and passionately familiar.

"That's the old Duchesse de Murols with Mrs. Talkett—there, she's put her at the Beausites' table! Well, of all places! Ah, but you're all too young to know about Beausite's early history. And now, of course, it makes no earthly difference to anybody. But there must be times when Mme. Beausite remembers, and grins. Now that she's begun to rouge again she looks twenty years younger than the Duchess.———Ah," she broke off, abruptly signing to Campton.

He followed her glance to a table at which Julia Brant was seating herself with the Tranlay ladies and George. Mayhew joined them, nobly deferential, and the elder ladies lent him their intensest attention, isolating George with the young girl.

"H'm," Adele murmured, "not such a bad thing! They say the girl will have half of old Montlhéry's money—he's her mother's uncle. And she's heaps handsomer than the other—not that that seems to count any more!"

Campton shrugged the subject away. Yes; it would be a good thing if George could be drawn from what his mother (with a retrospective pinching of the lips) called his "wretched infatuation." But the idea that