“You see, we have not the privilege of acquaintance with the postmistress of Kilrathy! Well, I must try and bring my brother to see you. But he is like your daughter; he is not _facile_. Like all those reactionary sort of people, he thinks nobody good enough to know. I never can induce him to make a new acquaintance. But perhaps if he sees this Dalou----” With a pretty smile she left the unfinished sentence to sink into the mind of Katherine Massarene’s mother. That simple and candid personage answered the unspoken thought. “We’ve had a-many asking for Kathleen’s hand, ma’am,” she said very stupidly. “But neither she or William are easy to please in that way. He looks so high as naught but kings would satisfy him, and she--well, I don’t know what she wants, I’m sure, and I don’t think she knows herself.” “Perhaps she’s in love with Framlingham!” cried her companion with a disagreeable little laugh, for she was provoked at her unplayed cards being discerned by a person of such limited intelligence. “A married man, ma’am!” cried Mrs. Massarene, with a countenance so pallid from horror that Lady Kenilworth laughed as heartily as if she were hearing Yvette Guilbert sing. “Oh, my good woman, how much you have got to learn!” she cried gaily. Mrs. Massarene patted her gown a little irritably, but she dared not resent; though it seemed to her that, after all her William had done for this lovely young lady, it was hard to be called by her a good woman. “I’ll never learn to break the Holy Commandments, ma’am,” she said in a tone of offence. “Oh, you dear droll creature!” cried her visitor, more and more amused. “But let us go over your lists,” she said sharply, realizing that she was wasting valuable time on this goose. “They will want no end of weeding. I will not meet anybody who is not in my own set. You’ll get the right people if you don’t mix them with the wrong.” With her little gold pencil as a stiletto she set to work mercilessly on her work of expurgation and execution. Mrs. Massarene looked on helpless but agitated; a sense of wrath was stirring in her mild bosom, but she dared not show it. “To be called a good woman!” she thought. “Just as I’d speak to the match-seller at the corner of a street!” The lists thus weeded with such pitiless surgery produced very brilliant gatherings at Harrenden House, and the falconer of Clodion saw nearly all that was fairest and noblest pass up the grand staircase which he guarded. Margaret Massarene, standing till she was ready to drop at the entrance of her reception-rooms, felt her head swim under her tiara as she heard the great names announced by Winters.