Gertrude and the professor are really the stars of this morning's luncheon, and they are having such an engrossing conversation on the other side of the table that no one but Marcia remarks this little episode. Everything to her savors of flirtation. Marcia Grandon could not entertain a simple, honest regard for any one; she is always studying effects, and she is hungry for admiration. All the small artifices she uses she suspects in every one else, and now in her secret heart she accuses Mrs. Floyd of flying at high game. Take it altogether, it is a decidedly charming little party. Mrs. Vandervoort, though not a handsome woman, is at the very height of fashion, and is particularly well-bred, as the Delancys are not modern people, but have the blue blood of some centuries without much admixture; there are a few others: madame makes her parties so select that it is a favor to be invited to one. She seeks out Violet just as they are beginning to disperse. "My dear Mrs. Grandon," she says, in that persuasive voice that wins even against the will, "I have been planning a pleasure for you with Mr. Grandon. You are to come down here for a day and a night next week, and we are to go to the opera; it is to be 'Lohengrin,' and you will be delighted. You are quite a German student, I hear. Now I am going to make arrangements with the professor and Gertrude." She smiles superbly and floats over to Gertrude. Violet turns a little cold; to come here for a day, to remain all night-- "Do you know," says Mrs. Latimer, when she is seated in her sister's carriage,--Mr. Latimer is to walk down town,--"I think that little Mrs. Grandon charming. She is coming to me on Tuesday, and we are to give a kind of family dinner to Gertrude. Laura's vexation made her rather unjust, and Mrs. Grandon's hair is magnificent, not really red, at all, and her manners are simply quaint and delicate. She doesn't need any training; it would be rubbing the bloom off the peach. I just wish Winnie Ascott could see her!" "You and John and the Ascotts have rather a weakness for bread-and-milk flavoring. She _is_ very nice, certainly, and quite presentable, but one can never predict how these innocent _ingenues_ will develop. They are very delightful at eighteen, but at eight-and-twenty one sometimes wants to strangle them, as you do Marcia Grandon." "Marcia is certainly not the black sheep of the family, for she hasn't the vim and color for absolute wickedness, but a sort of burr that pricks and _sticks_ where you least desire it. Now, Laura will make an extremely stylish woman of fashion, and tall, fair Gertrude, with her languors and invalidisms, will be picturesque, but an old maid like Marcia Grandon would be simply intolerable! Let us join hands and get her married." "And I dare say Marcia was one of the sweet innocents," Mrs. Vandervoort remarks, dryly.