"How d'ye do, Mrs. Branscombe?" says a voice at her elbow, a moment later, and, turning, she finds herself face to face with Mr. Kennedy. "Ah! you?" she says, with very flattering haste, being unmistakably pleased to see him. "I had no idea you were staying in the country." "I am staying with the Luttrells'. Molly asked me down last month." "She is a great friend of yours, I know," says Mrs. Branscombe; "yet I hadn't the faintest notion I should meet you here to-day." "And you didn't care either, I dare say," says Mr. Kennedy, in a tone that is positively sepulchral, and, considering _all_ things, very well done indeed. "I should have cared, if I had even once thought about it," says Mrs. Branscombe, cheerfully. Whereupon he says,-- "_Thank_ you!" in a voice that is _all_ reproach. Georgie colors. "I didn't mean what _you_ think," she says, anxiously. "I didn't _indeed_." "Well, it sounded exactly like it," says Mr. Kennedy, with careful gloom. "Of course it is not to be expected that you ever _would_ think of me, but----I haven't seen you since that last night at Gowran, have I?" "No." "I think you might have told me then you were going to be married." "I wasn't going to be married then," says Georgie, indignantly: "I hadn't a single idea of it. Never thought of it, until the next day." "I quite thought you were going to marry me," says Mr. Kennedy, sadly; "I had quite made up my mind to it. I never"--forlornly--"imagined you as belonging to any other fellow. It isn't pleasant to find that one's pet doll is stuffed with sawdust, and yet--" "I can't think what you are talking about," says Mrs. Branscombe, coldly, and with some fine disgust; she cannot help thinking that she must be the doll in question, and to be filled with sawdust sounds anything but dignified. Kennedy, reading her like a book, nobly suppresses a wild desire for laughter, and goes on in a tone, if possible, more depressed than the former one. "My insane hope was the doll," he says: "it proved only dust. I haven't got over the shock yet that I felt on hearing of your marriage. I don't suppose I ever shall now." "Nonsense!" says Georgie, contemptuously. "I never saw you look so well in all my life. You are positively fat." "That's how it always shows with me," says Kennedy, unblushingly. "Whenever green and yellow melancholy marks me for its own, I sit on a monument (they always keep one for me at home) and smile incessantly at grief, and get as fat as possible. It is a refinement of cruelty, you know, as superfluous flesh is not a thing to be hankered after." "How you must have fretted," says Mrs. Branscombe, demurely, glancing from under her long lashes at his figure, which has certainly gained both in size and in weight since their last meeting. At this they both laugh. "Is your husband here to-day?" asks he, presently. "Yes." "Why isn't he with you?" "He has found somebody more to his fancy, perhaps."