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hall at Courtlay beside the china and the old brass warming-pans. So you needn’t trouble about that. But I hope they won’t expect me to stay all day and all night too at their old garden-party.”

“Oh, no; you can get off the evening part.”

“I will if I can; and yet I feel rather curious to see what Mrs. Austin will do next. She has some people from town staying with her, and they do go on in the maddest way, so Mrs. Burton tells me. She says there was a most terrific noise in the Austins’ garden last night about ten o’clock, and there were the whole party playing blind-man’s-buff by moonlight. The Burtons’ nursemaid could hardly get the baby to sleep again. I must say that good little Mrs. Burton is a little bit of a gossip. How she does talk when she once begins! Whatever my faults are, I don’t like gossip, but some people will listen to any tales. However, it appears that our beauty has got a new young man in tow, a globe-trotter named Campbell—I think I used to know some of his people—and she simply spends hours out in the boat alone with him.”

“I don't like gossip either,” said Alice , laughing, but not very heartily. “But I do like analysis of character, and I fancy Mrs. Burton is just the woman to provide us with it.”