"All right, but mention her name clearly when you introduce me. Women are such changing creatures--to-day pretty, to-morrow plain, yesterday ugly. I have to be reintroduced to most of my female acquaintances three times a week. May I wait to see Clorinda?" "No, not to-day. She has to undergo the Preliminary Exam. Perhaps she may not even matriculate. Where you come in is at the graduation stage." "I see. To pass them as Bachelors--I mean Old Maids. I say, how will you get them to wear stuff gowns?" The bell rang loudly. "That may be she. Good-bye, Lord Silverdale. Remember you are Honorary Trier of the Old Maids' Club, and don't forget those chocolate creams." CHAPTER III. THE MAN IN THE IRONED MASK. The episode that turned Clorinda Bell's thoughts in the direction of Old Maidenhood was not wanting in strangeness. She was an actress of whom everybody spoke well, excepting actresses. This was because she was so respectable. Respectability is all very well for persons who possess no other ability; but bohemians rightly feel that genius should be above that sort of thing. Clorinda never went anywhere without her mother. This lady--a portly taciturn dame, whose hair had felt the snows of sixty winters--was as much a part of her as a thorn is of a rose. She accompanied her always--except when she was singing--and loomed like some more substantial shadow before or behind her at balls and receptions, at concerts and operas, private views and church bazaars. Her mother was always with her behind the scenes. She helped her to make up and to unmake. She became the St. Peter of the dressing-room in her absence. At the Green Room Club they will tell you how a royal personage asking permission to come and congratulate her, received the answer: "I shall be most honored--in the presence of my mother." There were those who wished Clorinda had been born an orphan.