“I t’ink, on de whole, I wear de odder; de one he gib me de time he take exvantage ob my innocence.”

“Since dose imitation pearls, honey,—he gib you anyt’ing else?”

“No; but he dat generous! He say he mean to make me a lil pickney gal darter: An’, oh, won’t dat be a day,” Edna fluted, breaking off at the sound of her mother’s voice in the corridor.

“... and tell de cabman to take de fly-bonnets off de horses,” she was instructing Ibum as she entered the room.

She had a gown of the new mignonette satin, with “episcopal” sleeves lined with red.

“Come, girls, de cab is waiting; but perhaps you no savey dat.”

They didn’t; and, for some time, dire was the confusion.

In the Peacock drawing-room of the Villa Alba, the stirring ballet music from Isfahan filled the vast room with its thrilling madness. Upon a raised estrade, a corps of dancing boys, from Sankor, had glided amid a murmur of applause.

The combination of charity and amusement had brought together a crowded and cosmopolitan assembly, and early though it was, it was evident already that with many more new advents there would be a shortage of chairs. From their yachts had come several distinguished birds of passage, exhaling an atmosphere of Paris and Park Lane.