shams of her life agreed with her own more gentle horror of pretension.  Marion, wreathed in veils, was, however, at the steering-wheel, and, as she guided the huge machine to the curbstone, showed no symptoms of wishing to alight.  Beside her was Reggie Bradford, a large, fat youth, whose big, good-natured laugh almost called back echoes from the surrounding houses.  As the car stopped he lumbered down from his perch, and helped Mrs. Bayford to descend.  When he had clambered back to his place again the great vehicle rolled on.  It was plain now to Miss Lucilla that a new act of the piece was about to begin, and she hurried back to the library in order to be in her place before the rising of the curtain.  For Miss Lucilla’s callers there was always an immediate subject of conversation which had to be exhausted before any other topic could be touched upon; and Mrs. Bayford tackled it at once, asking the questions and answering them herself, so as to get it out of the way.

“Well, how is Regina?  Very much the same, of course.  I don’t suppose you’ll see any change in her now, until it’s for the worse.  Poor thing! one could almost wish, in her own interests, that our Heavenly Father would think fit to take her to Himself.  Now, I want to talk to you about something serious.”

Mrs. Bayford made herself comfortable in a deep, low chair, with her feet on a footstool.

“I suppose you’ve never guessed,” she asked, at last, “why Marion has been with me all this time?”

“I did guess,” Miss Lucilla admitted, with a faint blush, “but I don’t know that I guessed right.”

“I expect you did.  No one could see as much of her as you’ve done without knowing she had a love-affair.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“It’s been a great trial,” Mrs. Bayford sighed, “and it isn’t over yet.  In fact, I don’t know but what it’s only just beginning.”

“Wasn’t he—­desirable?”

“Oh yes; very much so, and is so still.  It wasn’t that.  He was all that any one could wish—­old family, position, title, good looks, everything.”

“But if Marion liked him, and he liked her—?”

“I could explain it to you better if you knew more about men.”

“I do know a—­a little,” Miss Lucilla ventured to assert, shyly.

“There is a case in which a little is not enough.  You’ve got to understand a man’s capacity for loving one woman and being fascinated by another.  I think they call it double consciousness.”

“I don’t think it’s very honorable,” Miss Lucilla declared, in disapproval.

“A man doesn’t stop to think of honor, my dear, when he’s in a grand passion.  Bienville has honor written in his very countenance, but this was an occasion when he couldn’t get it into play.  It was perfectly tragic.  He had already spoken to Robert Grimston in the manliest way—­told all about himself—­found out how much Marion would have as her dot—­and got permission to pay her his addresses—­when all came to nothing because of another woman.”