It was the afternoon of Saturday the fourth that Mr. Rickman, looking up from his table, saw a brilliant apparition coming across the lawn. He dreaded afternoon callers, he dreaded the post, he dreaded every person and every thing which reminded him that Lucia Harden had a life that he knew not and that knew not him. "Lucia--Lucia!" Mr. Rickman looked up and saw the brilliant apparition standing in the south window. "Lu-chee-a!--" it pleaded. "You can't say you're out when I can see perfectly well that you're in." "Go away Kitty, I'm busy." "You've no business to be busy at five o'clock in the afternoon." Miss Kitty Palliser's body was outside the window, but her head, crowned with a marvellous double-peaked hat of Parma violets, was already within the room. "I'm dying of thirst," she said; "take me in and be kind to me and give me tea." Lucia rose and went to the window, reluctant but resigned. Scraps of their conversation floated down to Mr. Rickman's end of the room. "Yes, you may well look at my hat." "I wasn't looking at it, I was looking through it." "Well, if you can see through my hat, Lucia, you can see through me. What do you think of it?" "Of the hat? Oh, the hat is a poem." "Isn't it? Did you ever see anything so inspired, so impassioned?" "Inspired, but--don't you think--just a little, a little meaningless?" "Meaningless? It's _packed_ with meaning." "I should like to know what it means." "If it means nothing else it means that I've been going to and fro the whole blessed afternoon, paying calls in Harmouth for my sins." "Poor Kitty." "The last three times I paid calls in Harmouth," said poor Kitty, "I sported a cycling skirt, the blousiest of blouses, and a tam-o'shanter over my left ear. Of course everybody was in. So I thought if I went like this--brand new frock--swagger hat--white gloves--that everybody would be out." "And were they?" "No. Just like my luck--they were all--all in!" "And yet you have the audacity to come here and ask for tea?" "For Goodness' sake, don't talk of tea." "I thought you were so thirsty." "So I am. I thirst for amusement." "Kitty! You've been amusing yourself all afternoon--at other people's expense." "Yes. It's cheap--awfully cheap, but fatiguing. I don't want to amuse myself; I want to be amused." Mr. Rickman took a longer look at the brilliant apparition.