I said we were many; for, besides the cast of "Tell," "Mrs. Tankerville's Tiara" demanded a practically unlimited number of young people in full dress for the ballroom scene. I have since suspected that Mazie, the diplomatic, selected the play for that very reason. She asked all the debutantes, and every one else who was "anybody"; and, no matter what we said, we were all sufficiently tickled to figure so publicly in a new dress, even if only for a few minutes, and in what I have seen aptly ticketed a "thinking part." Such was my own, and I was divided between a feeling of relief that I had no speeches to remember and deliver in the hollow expectant silence of the audience-room, and an inward conviction that had I been cast for a leading role, I should have done much better than anyone else. The performance was, of course, late in beginning; but everybody expected that, and although people had been invited for nine, many did not arrive until long after. To this day I can remember the look of the ballroom,[5] very high, wide, and chilly, rows of empty chairs drawn up across the floor, spirals of smilax twisted around the pillars--it was a hard place to decorate, so big and bare--and Mrs. Pallinder erect by the door, with a grove of potted plants behind her. She had to receive by herself, as Mazie took part in the second play, and did not care to dull the effect of her first costume by letting it be seen prematurely. Mazie had a fine idea of dramatic proprieties, and a certain sense of climax. The colonel did not show for some reason; I believe he was downstairs, welcoming the men as they came in, to the punchbowl on the sideboard. Mrs. Botlisch had providentially gone to bed with a bilious attack; she had entertained us with a particular account of her symptoms, remedies, and their results at luncheon. So Mrs. Pallinder received, looking rather haggard, I thought, in spite of her rouge; perhaps it was because she was not wearing those famous diamonds, and one missed their generous brilliance. Jewels were eminently suited to Mrs. Pallinder; her fair hair and clear stone-grey eyes seemed to gain a needed lustre from her necklaces and pendants, and she was the only woman I ever saw who could wear an earring gracefully. That barbaric ornament set her ear like a drop of dew on the petal of a flower--there was no hint of mutilation about it; and I believe she could have sported a stud in her nostril without offence. She was placed to the utmost advantage; her delicately classic head and white shoulders were detached upon the background of dark foliage with a charming cameo-like effect. But she was all one faint exquisitely-faded colour in an ashes-of-roses silk, and that or something else more subtle made her look strangely older. She had surrendered her diamonds with many playful-serious cautions to _Mrs. Tankerville_, that is, Mazie; and that young woman was decorating her languid Oriental person with them in the depths of her den of