"You make it much easier for me," she said at length, after the assemblage appeared complete and no new arrivals had occurred for at least ten minutes. "It was so kind of you to come, when I know that you make a rule of not going anywhere."
"This was a very exceptional invitation, my dear," answered Mrs. Dares. "It was something wholly out of the common, you know."
"I understand," said Pauline, with her sweetest laugh. "You wanted to see your mantle descend, after a manner, upon my younger shoulders. You wanted to observe whether I should wear it gracefully or not."
"I had few doubts on that point," was the slow, soft reply.
"So you really think me a worthy pupil?" continued Pauline, glancing about her with an air of pretty and very pardonable pride.
"You have a most lovely home," said Mrs. Dares, "and one exquisitely designed for the species of entertainment which you are generous enough to have resolved upon."
"Ah, don't say 'generous,'" broke in Pauline. "You give me a twinge of conscience. I am afraid my motive has been quite a selfishly ambitious one. At least, I sometimes fancy so. How many human motives are thoroughly disinterested? But if I succeed with my salon—which before long I hope to make as fixed and inevitable a matter as the day of the week on which it is held—the result must surely be a most salutary and even reformatory one. In securing my guerdon for work accomplished I shall have done society a solid benefit; and when I wear my little crown I shall feel, unlike most royal personages, that it is blessed by friends and not stained by the blood of enemies."
Her tone was one of airy jest, but a voice at her side instantly said, as she finished,—
"Do not be too sure of that. Very few crowns are ever won without some sort of bloodshed."
She turned and saw Kindelon, who had overheard nearly all her last speech to Mrs. Dares. Something in his manner lessened the full smile on Pauline's lips without actually putting it to flight.