Katherine discreetly turned her eyes from the bed to the window, and when she looked round again, two blooming rose-coloured cheeks balanced the girlish curls, and Lady Garribardine was reposing languidly upon her pillows. "Dearest Aunt Sarah, I had to come," cried Lady Beatrice in her plaintive discontented voice, "Gerard has been perfectly impossible, actually has refused to let me go to the Artist Model's ball as Ganymede, and I have got the most ducky dress, a pendant to Hebe Vermont's Iris." "A few rags of chiffon, a cup and bare legs, I suppose," Lady Garribardine retorted not unkindly, as her niece sat upon the bed. "You may describe it like that if you want to, Aunt Sarah! I assure you, though, it is most becoming, and it is too ridiculous when everyone we know is going, and all the Thorvils have such tiny ankles, too." "The more reason for you not to expose them to the common herd. Go naked if you so desire to a ball in a private house among your own class--you'll lay yourself open only to criticisms of your charms there--but to let hoi polloi gaze at you undressed is to lower your order; I am with Gerard about that." Lady Beatrice pouted. "I really thought you were so up to date, Aunt Seraphim, darling, that you would be sure to side with me--of course I shall go, all the same; I should not think of paying any attention to Gerard--only it would be so much nicer if you had consented to scold him for me." "I am up to date, I hope, in so far as I try to move with the times"--Lady Garribardine's face was good-naturedly contemptuous--"only, I consider that all of you who throw your bonnets over the windmills are cutting your own throats--You are destroying values, cheapening pleasures, breaking down hedges, and letting in the swine to feed upon your grapes--you are often very vulgar, you modern people." Lady Beatrice got off the bed. "Then there is no use talking, Aunt Sarah--I dare say we are--but what matter? I wish I knew what _does_ matter? I am bored all the time; I get some momentary pleasure out of my poetry, and some out of my dear precious friends--but the rest of the day is one long yawn. You ought not to grudge my being Ganymede; every sort of quaint creature is at this ball, and I get quite amused each year when I go." "Why don't you take a box, then, and watch them? I could quite understand that, and intend to do so myself--Miss Bush, by the way, did you write to say I would have number five?" Katherine replied in the affirmative and Lady Beatrice suddenly became aware of her presence as she resumed her place on the bed. "Oh, this is your new secretary, Aunt Sarah! I am sure you have a frightfully difficult time--er--Miss Bush!" And she laughed, "Her Ladyship expects perfection." "Her Ladyship has quite a right to as good as can be got--since she pays for it." Katherine's voice was deep and level, and contained no impertinence, only a grave statement of fact. Lady Garribardine chuckled among her pillows.