'Yes, it will do for you to talk,' said Josephine; 'but everybody is not rich like you. And even you, I suppose, don't choose to live as you are for ever. You'll marry too; your finger says so. And I must, I suppose. But I can't tell you how horrid it is. I tell you what, Hazel; one must like a man very much to be willing to give up one's liberty!' Hazel was not fond of that way of stating the case, even yet. She wet back to the former words. 'Horrid?' she said,—'there is no English strong enough. And "must" is absurd, so long as your liberty is in your own power. If ever I "don't choose," as you say, it will be because I don't choose.' Poor Josephine rose up, straightened herself, with a bearing half proud half defiant, and looked away. Then in another minute, seeing her chance, she darted or glided from her covert, and before Hazel's indignant and pitying gaze, plunged into a gay bit of badinage with her lover who was passing near. No trace of regret or of unwillingness apparent; Josephine was playing off her usual airs with her usual reckless freedom; she and Charteris were presently out of sight. 'And she presumed to bring him here without my leave, and _then_ came down upon me for pity! Well—the supply is unlimited,—she can have all she wants.'—And Hazel looked down at her own ring, which meant so much; thinking of the diamonds which meant so little; and went off among her guests, to keep them in more respectful attitudes than even ever before. For Miss Kennedy was extremely remote this day, placing herself at such a dainty distance as was about equally fascinating and hard to bear. Somehow she evaded all the special little devotions with which she was beset; contriving that they should fall through so naturally, that the poor devotee blamed nothing but his own fingers, and followed the brown eyes about more helplessly than ever. Only one or two lookers-on saw deeper. Mr. Kingsland smiled, pursing his studies. 'This ethereal power which one cannot get hold of,' he remarked to himself, 'becomes truly terrific in such hands. Now there is young Bradford,—he picked up out those chestnuts solely and exclusively for the heiress of Chickaree,—and in some inexplicable way she has made him hand over to Molly Seaton. Not a cent but what her brothers may give her. And how Tom Porter comes to be walking off with Miss May, nobody will ever know but the sorceress herself. She will none of him,—nor of anybody else. Who has won?' 'You are expecting more guests, I see, even at this late hour,' he remarked aloud to Mr. Falkirk. 'Why do you judge so?' 'I notice a certain absence,' said Mr. Kirkland. 'Also a vacant place which no one here is allowed to fill. "Trifles light as air," perhaps,—and yet—' 'Where is your associate counsel to-day, Mr. Falkirk?' said Kitty Fisher, interposing her pretty figure. 'Do you and he take it "off and on"?'