“Better wait, Lily”—her fiancé extended his hand—“until the program is filled out the way it is going to stand.” And Blair fixed his handsome eyes on his future wife. “Why, we got this shindig up,” he noted irreverently, “just so Miss Lane could sing at it.” “Nonsense,” she cried, angry and powerless, “you ridiculous creature! Fancy me getting up a musicale for Letty Lane! Do tell Dan to stop bothering and fussing, Gordon. He’s too ridiculous!” And Lord Galorey said: “What is the row anyway?” “Why, I want Miss Lane to sing here on Sunday,” Dan explained.... “And I don’t want her,” finished the Duchess of Breakwater, who was evidently unwilling to force a scene before Lord Galorey. She handed the list to her servant, but Dan intercepted it. “Don’t send out that list, Lily, as it is.” He gave it back to her, and his tone was so cool, his expression so decided and quiet, that she was disarmed, and dismissed the servant, telling him to return when she should ring again. Coloring with anger, she tapped the envelope against her brilliantly polished nails. If she had been married to Blair she would have burst into a violent rage; if he had been poorer than he was she would have put him in his place. Lord Galorey understood the contraction of her brows and lips as Dan reminded: “You promised me that you would have her, you know, Lily.” “Give in, Lily,” Galorey advised, rising from the chair where he was lounging. “Give in gracefully.” And she turned on Galorey the anger which she dared not show the other man. But Dan interrupted her, explaining simply: “I knew the girl when she was a kid: she is from my old home, and I want Lily to ask her here to sing for us, and then to see if we can’t do something to get her out of the state she is in.” Galorey repeated vaguely, “State?” “Why, she’s all run down, tired out; she’s got no real friends in London.” The other man flicked the ash from his cigarette and looked at Blair’s boy through his monocle. “And you thought that Lily might befriend her, old chap?” “Yes,” nodded Dan, “just give her a lift, you know.” Galorey nodded back, smiling gently. “I see, I see—a moral, spiritual lift? I see—I see.” He glanced at the woman with his strange smile. She put her cigarette down and seated herself, clasping her hands around her knees and looked at her fiancé. “It’s none of my business what Letty Lane’s reputation is. I don’t care, but you must understand one thing, Dan, I’m not a reformer, or a charitable institution, and if she comes here it is purely professional.” He took the subject as settled, and asked for a copy of the program and put it in his pocket. “I’ll get the names of her songs from her and take the thing myself to Harrison’s. And I’d better hustle, I guess; there’s no time to lose between now and Sunday.” And he went out triumphant.