It is said that a pretty woman is never out of patience when she has a glass to gaze at, and Betty Steel, casting critical yet complacent glances into the depths of a Venetian mirror, awaited the descent of her very particular friend, Madge Ellison, with the sweet content of a lily waiting for the moon. Mrs. Betty’s face was a Diana’s face, but her body was of the color of a blush-rose in her summer-rose dress. The figure had charm enough as it idled to and fro in the spacious, mellow-tinted room. Mirror and window showed her patronage; the one, symbolical of self alone; the other of that same self’s outlook upon life at large. Betty was in one of her most radiant moods. A letter had come for her from her husband by the morning post; his eyes were much better, and there was no cloud upon the horizon.

Parker Steel’s wife heard the frou-frou of a silk petticoat sweeping down the stairs, the sudden opening of the study door, a man’s footstep crossing the hall.

“What, out to tea again in your best frock?”

The rustling of silk ceased for a moment at the foot of the stairs. Betty Steel smiled like a wise and intelligent elder sister. Madge Ellison, and their most stylish locum-tenens, Dr. Little, had reached that degree of familiarity that permits two people to spar amiably with each other.

“A grievance, as usual! I suppose you grudge us the carriage?”

“Nothing half so selfish, I assure you.”

“Why not come and pay calls with us?”

“The old proverb, Miss Ellison.”

“A little goes a long way, is that it?”

“Am I so little?”

“What’s in a name!” and she passed on with a significant side glance and an arch lifting of the chin.

Dr. Little, a black-chinned, tailor-waisted, superfine person, with a distinct “air,” proceeded on a hypothetical expedition up the stairs. He had remembered leaving his latch-key in his bedroom, a useful excuse for meeting a pretty woman on the way, as though the coincidence were supremely natural.

“Au revoir.”

Miss Ellison favored him with an undeniable wink as she picked up a pink parasol from the hall table. She was one of those women who remind one forcibly of the stage-beauty as seen on very young men’s mantel-pieces. Madge Ellison would show as much of an open-work stocking as was compatible with social refinement. A retroussé nose and a round and rather cheeky chin associated themselves naturally with her methods of fascination.

“Madge!”

“Yes, dear.”

“Here, quick, I want you!”

“Bless my soul, why this tragic note?”

“Look, the window; do you recognize any one by the church-railings?”

There was a hard abruptness in Betty Steel’s voice. She was leaning forward with her hand on the window-sill, her face curiously changed in its expression from the purring contentment of two minutes ago.

“I see a solitary female, dear.”

“Don’t you recognize her?”

Miss Ellison gave a quaint and expressive little whistle.

“No, surely, it can’t be!”

“Kate Murchison.”

“By George, dear, it is!”

The two friends watched the figure in black disappear under the old gate-house that stood at the northwest corner of the square. For Madge Ellison there was nothing more inspiriting than curiosity in the event. To Betty Steel that passing glimpse had opened up all the hatred of the past.

“What’s in your mind, Madge?”

Miss Ellison was buttoning her gloves.

“I’ll bet a tea-cake to a penny bun, dear, that it is the Murchisons who have taken their house in Lombard Street again.”

“Nonsense!”

Betty Steel’s eyes grew hard and dangerous at the suggestion.

“Why nonsense?”

“The Murchisons would hardly have the impudence to sneak back to Roxton. People don’t care to be bungled into the next world by a drunkard.”

“My word, Betty, draw it mild. I never heard that the man drank.”

“You were in Italy, then, I believe.”

“Nasty, nasty! You are peevish over the poor people’s failings!”

“I hate that woman, Madge.”

Miss Ellison laughed at the sincerity of her friend’s spite.

“Why, what earthly harm can that woman do you by choosing to live in Roxton?”

“I tell you, Madge, there are some people in this world who set one’s teeth on edge. After all, what need for all this waste of antipathy. Kate Murchison must be staying with the Carmagees. I’ll risk that as my explanation.”

Spirited away on a round of social duties, Betty Steel and her friend paid their third call that afternoon at the Canonry in Canon’s Court, off Cloister Street. A row of carriages under the avenue of limes, and a liveried servant standing on duty under the Georgian portico, reminded Betty Steel that the third Friday in the month was the date printed on Mrs. Stensly’s cards. Betty and her gossip were announced in the crowded drawing-room, where a number of bored figures were balancing teacups and talking with forced animation. A few men, severely saddened by their responsibilities, were treading on each other’s heels, and looking anxiously for ladies who would take pity on sandwiches or cake. The French windows of the room were open to the May sunshine of the garden, and the fringes of a cedar could be seen sweeping the sleek grass.

Individual faces disassociate themselves slowly from such an assemblage, and Betty Steel, blockaded under the lee of a grand-piano, had but half the room under the ken of her keen eyes. Madge Ellison had been left to chat with Mr. Keightly, a very popular and enthusiastic curate who had rendered his character doubly fascinating by professing to hold prejudices in favor of celibacy. Betty had a brewer’s wife at her elbow. They had exchanged ecstatic confidences on the exquisite shape and color of Mrs. Stensly’s tea-service, and were both groping for some further topic to keep the conversation moving.

“And how is the play going, Mrs. Steel?”

“The play?”

Mrs. Betty seemed unusually pensive and distraught.

“Lady Sophia’s play.”

“As well as a piece can go—with amateurs. We all find fault with our neighbors.”

“I hear it is a splendid little play.”

“Not at all bad.”

“I must say I like the pathetic style of play.”

“Oh yes, quite charming.”

“I saw Julia Neilson play in that play, oh—what was the play called?—”

“‘A Woman of no Ideal,’ most likely,” thought Mrs. Betty. “I wonder how many more times she is going to tread on that one unfortunate word.”

She waited demurely for the title to recur, but it appeared lost in the limbo o............