Presently Marmaduke, seeing us, comes quickly up, and, having welcomed mother and Dora, offers me his arm with the air of a proprietor, and carries me away from my family. I feel as though treading on air, and am deliciously far from shyness of any description. Before we have gone very far, my conversational powers assert themselves. "Marmaduke, don't you think I am looking very nice?" I say naively. "Very, darling. You always look that." This general praise disappoints me. Whatever an infatuated person may have chosen to consider me in the time past, I am satisfied that at the present moment I really am worthy of admiration. "But you cannot have seen my dress," I persist; "it came all the way from London: and _we_ all think it so pretty. Look at it, Marmaduke." He turns his head willingly in my direction, but his gaze gets little farther than my face. "It is charming," he says, with enthusiasm. "That pale green suits you tremendously." "Pale-green!" and I am all faintest azure. I break into a merry laugh, and give him an imperceptible shake. "Green, you ridiculous boy! Why, there is not a particle of green about me. I am nothing but pink and blue. Do look at me again, Marmaduke, or I shall die of chagrin." "Well, it was the blue I meant," declares my lover, composedly. "Then, come with me to the other side, Phyllis: I want to introduce you to Lady Alicia Slate-Gore." "Lady Alicia!" I gasp, awestruck. "Is--is the duke here?" "No; he is in Scotland. Lady Alicia came by herself. She is an old friend of mine, darling, and I am very fond of her. I want you, therefore, to be particularly charming to her." "How can you expect me to be that--under the circumstances?" I ask, lightly, glancing up at him from under my lashes with a sudden and altogether new touch of coquetry born of the hour and my gay attire. "How can I be amiable, when you tell me in that bare-faced fashion of your adoration for her? Of course I shall be desperately jealous and desperately disagreeable during the entire interview." Marmaduke's face betrays the intense delight all men feel when receiving flattery from the beloved one. Perhaps, indeed, he appears a trifle sillier than the generality of them, incense coming from me being so totally unexpected. I know by his eyes he would give anything to kiss me, were it not for shame sake and the gaping crowd. "Is your Lady Alicia very terrific?" I ask, fearfully and then, almost before he has time to answer my question, we are standing before a tall, benevolent-looking woman of forty-five, with a hooked nose, and a scarlet feather in her bonnet, and I am bowing and smirking at Lady Alicia Slate-Gore. She is more than civil--she is radiant. She taps me on the cheek with her fan, and calls me "my dear," and asks me a hundred questions in a breath. She taps Marmaduke on the arm and asks him what he means by making love to a child who ought to be in her nursery dreaming fairy-tales.