She was perhaps about thirty, yet she had more experience of the world than Clare could ever have won in a lifetime. In girlhood she had been handsome; but her beauty--if real beauty she ever possessed--was already gone; bloom at least had departed. She was fair, blue-eyed, and not unlike her brother, with a proportionately tall figure, and a face rather aristocratic in contour, but with a keener, sharper, more haughty and defiant expression. One of the _three_ suites of diamonds that Clare had seen was sparkling on her brow and bosom. She was attired in violet velvet, with priceless point lace, cut in the extreme mode: her neck and shoulders were bare, and her dress cut so absurdly low behind as to show rather too much of a certainly fair and snow-white back. Clare's chief objection to her, apart from the disparity of years, was that the Honourable Evelyn had the unpleasant reputation of having done more than one very fast thing in her life, though no one could precisely say what they were; and though she was the daughter of a peer and a sister of a major in the Guards, all men had a cool, _insouciant_, and even flippant or half 'chaffing' mode of addressing her, that they would never have dared to adopt to a girl like Clare Collingwood. 'Your papa has told you about--you know what, Clare?' said Miss Desmond, looking not in the slightest degree abashed, though lowering her tone, certainly. 'Yes,' said Clare, curtly and wearily. 'We must be better friends than ever, Clare.' Miss Collingwood fanned herself in silence, so Evelyn spoke again: 'I suppose you know when the--the event takes place?' 'No.' 'How monosyllabic you are,' said the other, while her lip quivered, and her eye lightened. 'Has Sir Carnaby not told you?' 'I never asked him,' was the half-contemptuous response. 'Why?' 'I was not aware that matters were in such a state of progression. A time is named, then, for--for this _affaire de fantasie_?' 'A month from to-day. Pray call it an _affaire du cœur_.' 'A month!' repeated Clare, dreamily. 'He would have it, he was so impatient,' said Evelyn Desmond, with something of a smile; but whether it was a triumphant or malignant one, Clare cared not to analyze. She only feared that the 'impatience' had been elsewhere, as Evelyn had been on the point of marrying with more than one man already, but there was always a flaw somewhere, and the affairs ended. Perhaps, as some hinted, they were too easily begun. As she could neither express pleasure or congratulation, Clare fanned herself in silence, until Evelyn said: 'And so you have refused Harvey?' 'Yes.' 'How exceedingly funny.' 'Why?' 'Because on that same morning I finally accepted Sir Carnaby. By the way,' she added, with a glance that was not a pleasant one, 'I heard that your old admirer, Trevor Chute, once of the Guards, was in town again.' 'Indeed.' 'Yes; perhaps that accounts for poor Harvey's disappointment.'