It may be one will dance to-day,
And dance no more to-morrow;
It may be one will steal away,
And nurse a lifelong sorrow;
What then? The rest advance, evade,
Unite, disport, and dally,
Re-set, coquet, and gallopade,
Not less—in "Cupid\'s Alley."
Austin Dobson.

"Mr. Darrell has sent us a card for his Private View," announced Gertrude, as they sat at tea one Saturday afternoon in the sitting-room.

"Oh, let me look, Gerty," cried Phyllis, taking possession of the bit of pasteboard. "\'The Misses Lorimer and friends.\' Why Conny might go with us."

[Pg 160]

Constance Devonshire had dropped in upon them unexpectedly that afternoon, after an absence of several weeks. She was looking wretchedly ill. Her usually blooming complexion had changed to a curious waxen colour; her round face had fallen away; there were dark hollows under the unnaturally brilliant eyes.

"I should rather like to go, if you think you may take me," she said; then added, with an air of not very spontaneous gaiety; "I suppose it will be what the society papers call a \'smart function.\'"

Stoicism, it has been observed, is a savage virtue. There was something of savagery in Conny\'s fierce reserve; in the way in which she resolutely refused to acknowledge, what was evident to the most casual observer, that there was something seriously amiss with her health and spirits.

"Is it not fortunate," said Lucy, "that Uncle Sebastian should have sent us that cheque? Now we shall be able to get ourselves some decent clothes."

"I mean to have a grey cachemire walking-dress, and my evening dress shall be grey too," announced Phyllis, who was one of the rare people who can wear that colour[Pg 161] to advantage. Fanny, who had rigid ideas about mourning, declared with an air of severity that her own new outfit should be black, then sighed, as though to call attention to the fact of her constancy to the memory of the dead, in the face of the general heedlessness.

"Gerty is thinking of rose-colour, is she not?" asked Phyllis, innocently, as she marked Gertrude\'s rapidly-suppressed movement of irritation.

"As regards a gown for this precious Private View—I am not going to it."

"The head of the firm ought to show up on such an occasion, as a mere matter of business," observed Lucy, smiling amiably at every one in general.

"Yes, really, Gerty," added Phyllis, "you are the person to inspire confidence as to the quality of our work. No one would suspect us"—indicating herself and her two other sisters—"of being clever. It would be considered unlikely that nature should heap up all her benefits on the same individuals."

"Am I such a fright?" asked Gertrude, a little wistfully.

"No, darling; but there could be no[Pg 162] doubt about your brains with that face."

"Wait a few years," said Conny; "she will be the best looking of you all."

"We will \'wait till she is eighty in the shade,\'" quoted Phyllis; "but when one comes to think of it, what a well-endowed family we are. Not only is our genius good-looking; that is a comparatively common case; but our beauties are so exceedingly intelligent; aren\'t they, Lucy?"

Constance Devonshire was right. Sidney Darrell\'s Private View at the Berkley Galleries, held on the last day of April, was a very smart function indeed. There were duchesses, beauties, statesmen, and clever people of every description galore. In the midst of them all Darrell himself shone resplendent; gracious, urbane, polished; infusing just the right amount of cordiality into his many greetings, according to the deserts of the person greeted.

"I never saw any one who possessed to greater perfection the art of impressing his importance on other people," whispered Conny to Gertrude, as the two girls strolled off together into one of the smaller rooms. Lucy had been led off by Frank and one of[Pg 163] his friends. That young woman was never long in any mixed assembly without attracting persons of the male sex to her side.

As for Phyllis, radiant in the new grey costume, its soft tints set off by a knot of Parma violets at the throat, she was making the round of the pictures under the escort of no less a person than Lord Watergate, who had come up to the Lorimers at the moment of their entrance; and Fanny, in a jetted mantle and bonnet, clanked about with Mr. Oakley, happy in the consciousness of being for once in the best society.

"What a dreary thing a London crowd is," grumbled Conny, who was not accustomed, in her own set, to being left squireless.

"Oh, but this is fun. So different from the parties one used to go to," said Gertrude, smiling, as Lord Watergate and her sister came up to them, to direct their attention to a particular canvas in the other room.

As they sauntered, in a body, to the entrance, Darrell came up with a young man of the masher type in his wake, whom he introduced to Phyllis as Lord Malplaquet.

"Lord Malplaquet is dying to hear your[Pg 164] theories of life," he said playfully, bestowing a beaming and confidential smile upon her.

"Mr. Darrell, you shall not amuse yourself at my expense," she responded gaily, as she plunged into the crowd under the wing of her new escort, who was staring at her with the languid yet undisguised admiration of his class.

"Now this is the real thing," said Lord Watergate to Gertrude, as they stopped before the canvas they had come to seek.

"Yes," said Gertrude, in mechanical acquiescence.

She was thinking: "What a mean soul I must have. Every one seems to like and admire this Sidney Darrell: and I suspect everything about him—even his art. For the sake of a prejudice; of a little hurt vanity, perhaps, as well."