Carlisle, an eye-catching figure in her calling costume (assuming that this is what it was) glanced after her poor relations from the Byrds' vestibule, and was amused by her thought. How exactly like the Cooneys' lively cheek (and nobody else's) to propose a country walk with them as a perfectly satisfactory substitute for an hour's _tête-à-tête_ with Hugo Canning! VII How the Great Parti, pursued or pursuing to Cousin Willie Kerr's apartment, begins thundering again. Bellingham Court was the very newest of those metropolitan-looking apartment hotels which the rapid growth and complicating "standards" of the city was then calling into being. It was on the most fashionable street, Washington, in one of the most fashionable parts of it. And it had bell-boys, onyxine vestibules, and hot and cold water in nearly every room. It also had a fat black hall-porter in a conductor's uniform, and this functionary informed Mrs. Heth that Mr. Kerr was momentarily detained at the bank, but had telephoned orders that any callers he might have were to be shown right up. The Heth ladies were shown right up. Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs. Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond. "It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a foot-tub." Carlisle, looking over her mother's shoulder, laughed. "You couldn't splash about much.... You shave at that, I suppose." "I don't. One shaves. There's a better apartment he could have got for the same price, but manlike he didn't find it out till too late. What's this--bedroom?... Yes, there's the bed." They stepped back into the sitting-room, and Carlisle, strolling aimlessly about, became a little silent and distrait. It is possibly true, as crusty single-men affirm, that a certain solacing faculty inheres in beautiful ladies: the faculty, namely, of explaining all apparently unwelcome situations upon theories quite flattering to themselves. But Carlisle surely needed no such make-believe in this moment of rather excited expectancy.