performance of Gounod's _Romeo and Juliet_. These were things not to be forgotten. When her husband died, Percy married and Clifford went to school, and Lady Kellynch was left alone in her big house in South Kensington, she became again what I call old-maidish. She had a hundred little rules and fussy little arrangements, of which the slightest disorganisation drove her to distraction. She had long consultations every day with the cook at nine o'clock as to what was to be done with what was left. She liked to be domestic, and would stand over the man who was cleaning the windows and tell him how to do it. Certain things she liked to do herself. In the drawing-room was a chandelier of the seventies, beautiful in its way, though out of date, and she used to take the lustres down and polish them with her own fingers, taking a great pride in doing this herself. She cared really for no one in the world but her two sons, but she was extremely fond, in her own way, of society and of receiving. She did not keep open house, and hers was not by any means casual hospitality. She hated anyone to call upon her unexpected and uninvited, except on the first and third Thursday of every month. She was very much surprised that in the rush of the present day people had a way of forgetting these days and calling on others. The first Thursday was peculiarly ill-treated and ignored, and preparations on that day were often wasted, while on the second Thursday she would come home and find a quantity of cards, belonging to more or less smart, if dull, people who had left them, with a sigh of relief at their mistake. Lady Kellynch was good-natured in a cold kind of way, and even lavish; yet she had her queer, petty economies, and was always talking about a mysterious feat that she spoke of as _keeping the books down_, and was also fond of discovering tiny little dressmakers who used to be with some celebrated one and had now set up for themselves. Lady Kellynch was very kind to these little dressmakers--she spoke of them as if they were minute to the point of being midgets or dwarfs--she was really rather the curse of their lives, and after a while they would have been glad to dispense with her custom. She wanted them to do impossibilities, such as making her look exactly as she did at Queen Victoria's first Jubilee (the time when she was so much admired and had such a success), and yet making her look up-to-date now, without any of the horrid fast modern style. When Clifford was at home things were considerably turned upside down, and when the time of his holidays drew to an end she was conscious of being relieved. It was the first Thursday, and Lady Kellynch was at home. A day or two before Clifford had spent a day with Pickering and his mother. She had told him he might ask the boy to tea. "Mother," said Clifford, who had received a note, "Pickering can't come to-day." "Oh, indeed--what a pity."