"Thank you very much, but indeed I am better where I am. I hate inflicting myself upon my friends when I am so hopelessly out of spirits. Perhaps by and by--towards evening--I shall lose this feeling of heaviness. I generally do, indeed, if I remain perfectly quiet during the day. Until then, dear Mrs. Carrington, I must ask you to excuse me. But"--going back to her own seat, withdrawing the coquettish little note from its concealment, and proceeding to fold it into a cocked-hat with elaborate openness--"will you not sit down for a few minutes?" I accept the hint. "No, indeed. I will leave you to get a little sleep, so that we may be the more sure of seeing you among us this evening." Much pleased with this speech, which sounds to my own ears particularly graceful, I move towards the door and vanish. "Well, how is she?" asks Bebe, coming upon me unexpectedly, and speaking in a suppressed and agitated tone, as though some one were dead or dying in the next room. "Is she anything better, poor darling? Does the doctor hold out the faintest chance of her recovery I Speak, and relieve my burning anxiety!" "I don't believe she is ill at all," I return, in high disgust. "She looks perfectly well, and her color quite as bright as ever." "A hectic flush, dearest. I fear our sweet friend is in a bad way. How could you look at her without seeing the ravages of disease? Dear Phyllis, I doubt you are sadly wanting in discernment. What did our 'stricken deer' say to you?" "Oh, she put on an affected drawl, and called herself a wretched being, and pressed her forehead tragically, and was meekly resigned in every way, and looked most provokingly healthy all the time. I know I was not half at sympathetic as I ought to have been." Bebe breaks into merry laughter. We have turned a corner, and are on our way downstairs by this. "Look here, Phyllis!" cries she: "you may take my word for it, the fair Blanche is this moment in as sound health as you or I." "But why, then, immure herself in her room and act the martyr?" "Tired of our company, probably, dear. We all understand Blanche's vapors by this time. The men have gone out, you see, not to return until dinner-hour, and women are so terribly insipid. My lady's dresses want renovating, it may be, and surely this a capital opportunity to see to them. _Voila-tout_." "And could she not say so? Why tell a lie about such a trifle?" "Blanche has a talent for lying. A pity to let it run altogether to waste, is it not? She enjoys a little mystery now and then; and, besides, she would die of chagrin if she thought we knew she even spent an hour upon the doing up of her things. We all have our 'little weaknesses,'" says Miss Beatoun, comically, as we enter the drawing-room. Somehow, the remembrance of that pink note and the faint confusion exhibited by Blanche Going on my entrance into her room lingers in my mind. I feel a vague dislike to that monogrammed epistle. For whom was it meant?