"I should make them stop talking, but they came for that, you know. And you are playing so well, it’s too pretty an interlude. Helen didn’t tell me that you could play like this." "And my new master makes me believe I can’t play a note," said Mabel. "I shall tell him he is quite wrong, because you said so." Aunt Katharine’s words came to her mind--playing at one end of the country no better than the other! Ah, well, it was newer, fresher, or something--taking it either way! Of course it came to an end. The girls slipped out with Adelaide Maud and found the long corridor with the white room containing their wraps and two attentive maids. They were covered up in their cloaks, and watched one or two leave before them, as they stood looking down on them from the staircase. "Nobody will miss us," said Adelaide Maud. "They are ’going on,’ you know." There was something rather sad in her voice. "They all go on to something or somebody, even that dear old Earl Knuptford, he will pick you at the same place next year that he found you at to-night, and say, ’Hey, what,’ and never think that both he and you have dropped twelve months out of your lives. It’s different at Ridgetown, isn’t it?" "Yes, there’s nothing to go on to at Ridgetown, is there?" said Jean grimly. "And nobody to forget or to say, ’Hey, what,’ even if they had never met you before." Her world was full of shining diplomats and she had chatted with an earl. Adelaide Maud looked softly after them. "Nothing to go on to at Ridgetown," she murmured. "And no one to forget." She smiled softly. "Ah! well, it’s nice that there’s no one to forget." CHAPTER XXII The Engagement The night at Lady Emily’s was by no means a first step into a new and fashionable world. Mabel and Jean never doubted for a moment that they were anything but spectators of that brilliant gathering. Even Adelaide Maud was only a spectator. Lady Emily and her husband were different from the world in which they moved because they had hobbies and minor interests which they occasionally allowed to interfere with the usual routine. Mr. Dudgeon had been known to skip a state banquet for a book which he has just received. And Lady Emily would make such calls and give such invitations as resulted in that wonderful little dinner party. But as for any of her set being interested, why, there was no time for that. Place something in their way, like Mabel sitting on a couch, part of which Earl Knuptford desired to make use and one met a "belted Earl." He became interested and dropped sentences pell-mell on Mabel’s astonished head. For days, Jean dreamed of large envelopes arriving--"The Earl and Countess of Knuptford request," etc.