Kate Clephane had smiled; these little rivalries were beginning to amuse her again. And the amusement of seeing Mrs. Minity appear (as of course she would) at Mrs. Plush’s that afternoon made it seem almost worth while to go there. Mrs. Clephane reached out for her engagement-book, scrutinized the day’s page, and found--with another smile, this one at herself--that she had already noted down: “Plush”. Yes; it was true; she knew it herself: she still had to go on cramming things into her days, things good, bad or indifferent, it hardly mattered which as long as they were crammed tight enough to leave no chinks for backward glances. Her old training in the art of taking things easily--all the narcotic tricks of evasion and ignoring--had come gradually to her help in the struggle to remake her life. Of course she would go to Mrs. Plush’s ... just as surely as Mrs. Minity would. * * * * * The day was glorious; exactly the kind of day, all the ladies said, on which one would want the dear Bishop to have his first sight of his new diocese. The whole strength of the Anglo-American colony was assembled on Mrs. Plush’s flowery terraces, among the beds of cineraria and cyclamen, and the giant blue china frogs which, as Mrs. Plush said, made the garden look “more natural”. Mrs. Plush herself sailed majestically from group to group, keeping one eye on the loggia through which the Bishop and Mr. Merriman were to arrive. “Ah, dear Lord Charles--this is kind! You’ll find _all_ your friends here. Yes, Mrs. Clephane is over there at the other end of the terrace,” Mrs. Plush beamed, waving a tall disenchanted-looking man in the direction of a palm-tree emerging from a cushion of pansies. Mrs. Clephane, from under the palm, had seen the manœuvre, and smiled at that also. She knew she was Lord Charles’s pretext for coming to the reception, but she knew, also, that he was glad to have a pretext, because if he hadn’t come he wouldn’t have known any more than she did what to do with the afternoon. There was nothing, she sometimes felt, that she didn’t know about Lord Charles, though they had met only three months ago. He was so exactly what medical men call “a typical case,” and she had had such unlimited time and opportunity for the study of his particular type. The only difference was that he was a gentleman--a gentleman still; while the others, most of them, never had been, or else had long since abdicated that with the rest.