With her disengaged hand she put up a pair of gold eye-glasses. "Oh, yes, surely yes," she said, while softly dropping Claire's hand; "you were one of my pupils?" Claire did not like this at all. But she would not have shown a trace of chagrin, just then, for a heavy reward. She smiled, knowing how sweet her smile was, and promptly answered: "I'm sorry that you only remember me as one of your pupils. I should like you to remember my name also. Are you quite certain that it has escaped you? Does not my face recall it?" "Your face is a very pretty one, my dear," said Mrs. Arcularius. She looked, while speaking, toward her recent companions, who were moving away, with light touches of their disarranged draperies and sidelong glances at Claire. Her tones were impenetrably civil, but her wandering eye, and the slight averted turn of her large frame, made their civility bear the value, no less, of an impromptu veneer. Claire divined all this, with rapid insight. Her wit began to work, in a sudden defensive way. She preserved her smile, looking straight at Mrs. Arcularius while she said, in a voice pitched so that the other ladies must of necessity hear it: "I was so obscure a little girl among all the grand little girls who went to your school in my time, that I don't at all blame you for finding it inconvenient to recall me. I fear I have been mistaken in addressing you as the woman of business, my dear madam, when you find the great lady alone to your humor. But you have played both parts with so much success that perhaps you will pardon me for alluding to one at the expense of the other." There was nothing pert in Claire's little speech. The few seconds that it took her to make it were epical in her life; they showed her the quality of her own powers to strike back with a sure aim and a calm nerve; she was trying those powers as we try the temper of a new blade. She moved away at once, with tranquil grace, and not a hint of added color or disconcerted demeanor. It was really very well done, in the sense that we call things well done which depend upon their manner, their felicity, their _chic_ of method. The ladies looked at each other and smiled, as though they would rather have kept their lips grave through politeness to Mrs. Arcularius; and she, on her own side, did not smile at all, but revealed that disarray of manner which we can best express in the case of some large fluttered bird by noting its ruffled plumage.