"I was right, Elsie," said she. "You know I was right." "Right?" asked Elsie. Her eyes shone with a. dark glamour. "You mean about it’s being so nice here, romantic and that sort of thing?" "No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck. She sometimes had rather a superb way of treating Elsie’s little imaginative extravagances. "I mean about mauve--mauve is the colour this year, don’t you see?" "Mamma," she said radiantly, "I quite forgot. I was simply wondering how long all this would last, or whether they’d suddenly cut us off the way Jean says they do." "They do," said Jean, "at these charity concerts. One after another runs on and makes its little bow. And some are detained, you know, and then the programme just comes to an end." "They seem to be going on all right," said Mrs. Clutterbuck placidly, "and mauve is the colour, you see." Another singer appeared, and Jean’s heaven was cleared of clouds by the evidence in this performer of a bad method. Now, indeed, it seemed an easy matter to believe that one could triumph over anything. That first, victorious, delicious voice had trodden on every ambition Jean ever possessed. But the frailty of a newcomer set her once more on her enthusiastic feet. "I should say it would be easy enough to get appearing at a concert like this," she said dimly to Elsie. Her eye was on the future, and the platform was cleared. At the piano sat Mr. Green, grown older a little, and more companionable as an accompanist; and in the centre, in radiant silver and white, and--and diamonds, sang Jean, the prima donna, Jean! She was startled by the sudden departure of the ambassador’s wife. "For the leaving of the princess I wait not," said this lady. With a cool little nod to Elsie, she descended the crowded stairs. Her remarks on the vulgarity of the singer rankled with Jean. The costume seemed so appropriate to that other fair dream. "I didn’t think her vulgar, did you?" she asked Elsie. "Not on a platform, perhaps," said Elsie vaguely. Her thoughts invariably strayed from dress. "But in a drawing-room she would look, look----" "Well, what Elsie?" asked Jean impatiently. Elsie’s dreamy eyes came down on her suddenly. "In a drawing-room she would look like a lamp shade," she blurted. It really was rather a tragedy for them that the golden voice should have been framed in so doubtful a setting. Elsie’s eyes were on the princesses. "They have eyes like calm lakes," said she. "How clever it must be to look out and feel and know, only to express very often something entirely different. Don’t you wonder what princesses say to themselves when they get alone together after an affair of this sort?" "I know," said Mabel. "They say, ’I wonder what girls like these girls on the stairs say of us after we are gone; do they say we are charming, as the newspapers do, or do they say----’ But they couldn’t think that, for they are charming, aren’t they?" asked Mabel.