COUNT LITVINOFF IS SYMPATHETIC.
T the moment when Mrs Fludger's sense of propriety was being outraged by what she termed, in a subsequent recital of her wrongs to her first-floor front, 'that shindy on the stairs,' Miss Stanley was lying on the sofa in the sitting-room at Morley's Hotel, reading the novel that had taken the last season by storm, and pushed everything else out of sight on the bookstalls. But even the thrilling interest of this work did not keep her from falling fast asleep in the middle of the fourth chapter; and she passed the next half hour in a dreamland more pleasant than Morley's Hotel; for that hostelry, especially when her father was, as usual, in the City, seemed to her to be deadly dull. She had just come back to the world of solid furniture and characterless window curtains; her first waking thought was that some tea would be worth anything to her just then—except the trouble of getting up to ring for it—and she wished dreamily that waiters could know by intuition when they were wanted. It almost seemed as if they did, for a tap came at the door, and she had to stop her reflections to say,—
'Come in.'
'Mr Richard Ferrier,' said the waiter who appeared. 'Are you at home, ma'am?'
'Oh, yes; show him up,' she said; and to herself, wonderingly, 'How funny of him to come at this time.' Then, as he entered, 'Good afternoon, Mr Ferrier. What a dreadful day! Papa has not come home yet.'
'I am very sorry to say,' said Richard, as he took her offered hand, 'that I shall not be able to come this evening.'
'Oh, I'm so sorry!' she said, cheerfully. 'I hope there's nothing wrong. Can't your brother come, either?'