There was a picture of Madge sitting round, and Margaret North picked it up and took it to the light. Margaret is one of the four mother had so delicately referred to. "You'll have to hurry, Kit," she said. "Sister's a raving beauty." "Oh, I don't know," I observed casually. "Beauty's not everything. The girl in the book had not been a beauty." "It's all there is," said Margaret. "Figure doesn't count any more. Anybody can have a figure who has a decent dressmaker." "How about brains?" I asked. There was a squeal at that. "Cut 'em out," said Ellie Clavering. "Hide 'em. Disguise 'em. Brains are--are clandestine." "Anyhow," somebody put in, "Kit isn't worrying; she's got Henry." That's how they'd fixed me. I knew what it meant. It was a cheap game, but they were playing it. They were going to tie me to Henry. They would ask us together, and put us together at dinners, and talk about us together. In the end everybody would think of us together. I'd seen it done before. It's ruined more débutantes than anything else. They'd put me out of the running before I'd started. I sat back with my cup of tea and listened, and it made me positively ill. It wasn't that they were clever. They were just instinctive. I could have screamed. And having disposed of me, having handcuffed me to Henry Baring and lost the key, so to speak, they went on to the real subject, which was Russell. Mother had said there were three eligibles. But to those little idiots round the tea table there was only one. They'd been friendly enough as long as Henry and I were on the rack. But the moment Russell's name was mentioned there was a difference. They didn't talk so much and they eyed each other more. Ella Clavering put both lemon and cream in her tea, and drank it without noticing. Somebody said very impressively that she understood the affair with Toots was off, and that Russell had said, according to report, that he was glad of it. He'd have a little time to himself now. "That means, I dare say," I said languidly, "that Russell is ready to bring his warmed-over affections to some of us!" There was a sort of electric silence for a minute. "It will take a very sophisticated person to land Russell after Toots," I went on. "He's past the ingénue stage." "If a girl is pretty she always has a chance with Russell." Margaret, of course. She was standing in front of a mirror and I had my eyes on her. Evidently what I had said made an impression, for she cocked her hat down an inch more over her right eye and watched to see the effect. "You ought to wear earrings, dear," I said. "You need just that dash of _chic_." Just for a moment I could see in every eye a sort of vision of Toots Warrington, with the large pearls she always wore in her ears--Toots, who had had Russell tame-catting for her off and on for years!