treating themselves to a London season. They had taken a first-floor flat in Mount Street, the best and most expensive that the Mayfair house-agents could find for them. Mrs. Stormont was not boastful about her wealth; but she saw no harm in mentioning that money was no object. "We want just the very best diggings you can find for us," she told the agent.

She met Lady Mary at the Lorimers two days after landing, and wanted to swear eternal friendship on the spot.

My husband positively doats upon your brother," she said; "so I think you and I ought to be pals. I admire you more than any one I've seen this side. Your frock is just perfect, and your figure is equal to it. But, of course, you know that. Don't suppose I'm pushing. I'm only openhearted; and I must say what I think straight out. I've come to this side to enjoy myself, and make nice friends. Archer did uncommonly well in the North-West-your brother the same, by-the-by, and poppa's operations in grain have just trebled Archer's capital; so you see expense don't stop us in anything. I mean to give London an eye-opener before I go back."

Mary asked what kind of eye-opener.

"Well, I guess it will take the shape of a dance; but I'm bothered how to lift it out of the commonplace. Your London balls are done so well nowadays, that it is difficult to imagine how one could beat the record. I want to strike out a line-something quite new and a bit eccentric. But how is it to be done? The café chantant is played out; or I'd have got some singers over from Paris-some of the risky ones. I believe I shall be driven to make it a water

party."

"A water-party and a dance! That seems a difficult combination."

"Not for any one that has the inventive faculty and the dollars. I've got both, thank Providence."

Lady Mary was amused. Vanessa's delicate prettiness and frank vulgarity made a piquant mixture. She invited Mrs. Stormont to her next little dinner-a dinner of sixMrs. Kelvin, Mr. and Mrs. Stormont, Lord St. Just, and Sir Frederick Marwood, a guardsman, who wrote verses of the most advanced character, and published them in a

luxurious binding at his own expense. Mr. Selby was at Liége, acting like an octopus upon an embryo railway, which he meant first to strangle as a Belgian enterprise, and then to launch with an English company.

It was one of Lady Mary's most successful dinners. Never had Mrs. Kelvin's shoulders been more dazzling, her Parisian diamonds more brilliant, or her speech more daring. Even the outspoken Vanessa was astonished at the startling propositions flashed across the table by the time the ices were being handed.

"I didn't mind the company," she told Archer, afterwards, "but I believe I was as red as a peony when I had to look at the servants."

They adjourned en masse from the dinner-table to the smoking-room, built at the back of the house, over unornamental space that had once been called a garden; a room with a movable roof, which was raised on a night like this, letting in the cool air, with glimpses of stars in a purple sky. The room was furnished with an Oriental luxury of divans and pillows, covered with gold inwrought brocade, rich and ancient fabrics, plundered from the vestiaries of old Italian churches, the copes of Renaissance bishops.

The three women smoked their cigarettes lightly and delicately, with an airy indifference to the charm of tobacco that made smoking coquetry, and not vice.

Vanessa, who was primitively egotistical as a child of seven, could talk hardly of anything but her coming party.

"I don't want it to be passed over in the paper with three lines-Mrs. Stormont's party was a great success,' or something mawkish of that kind. I do want my party to stand alone. I've been thinking of a water-party."

"Admirable !" exclaimed Sir Frederick. "A waterparty would be new. Eighteenth-century to the fortieth power-suggestive of Sir Plume and Belinda."

"Never heard of the lady. Is she one of your professional beauties ?" asked Vanessa.

"Alas!" sighed Sir Frederick, "Belinda belongs to the past. She has gone up aloft among the constellations, after her stolen ringlet. I congratulate you on your idea, Mrs. Stormont. A water-party in this tropical weather would be of all things the most delicious. But you must

not waste your July, and eighty in the shade, on long invita tions. A week at most can be hazarded. Send out your cards the instant they are ready. St. Just and I will put it about that your party will eclipse everything ever seen; and people will throw over their engagements to go to it. And then you need not start till midnight; and people can come on to you after other things."

Yes, that's about the size of it," replied Vanessa, elated, having found a man who understood her. "Will you help me through with it, Sir Frederick? I'll do just whatever you tell me. Money no object."

"If money were an object, dear Mrs. Stormont, it would be futile to attempt anything of the kind. But if Mr. Stormont approve, I shall be charmed to run the thing for you."

"Archer! He never disapproves. He knows when it comes to entertaining the swells he's got to take a back seat."

It

Stormont had been telling Mrs. Kelvin Chicago anecdotes, racy of the soil, and received with silvery laughter; although the lady's attention had often wandered to the conservatory beyond the curtained archway at the end of the room. was not a large conservatory, space in Grosvenor Square being a difficult problem for the architect; but it was large enough to contain a few fine palms, a screen of Marechal Niel and Niphetos roses, with a bank of choice carnations in front of them; it was also large enough to hold two luxurious armchairs, in which Lady Mary and St. Just were seated, the lady's white brocade train and the point of a jewelled shoe just visible between the Oriental curtains, and the sound of lowered voices faintly audible to one keen listener.

"It's the old, old story," thought Mrs. Kelvin. "What kind of chance can any marriageable woman have while the married ones are such abominable flirts?"

The raciest American stories left her cold.

"Let us hear what Sir Frederick is saying about Mrs. Stormont's party," she said, whereupon the conversation. became a quartette; but there was not a word more about the party.

"It is to be a surprise," Sir Frederick said, "and nobody except Mrs. Stormont and me is to know anything about it."

"Isn't it lovely?" exclaimed Vanessa; "a kind of gunpowder plot."

Engravers were expeditious, and Mrs. Stormont's cards were sent out on the following evening.

"Mrs. Stormont requests the pleasure of Lady Blank's company at a river-party on Tuesday, July 13th. Boats will leave Hammersmith pier at midnight Carriages to be ordered at 4.30 a.m. at Vauxhall Station, L.S.W.R."

XXV.

THE elements were kind to Vanessa. The night of her party was blest with a purple sky, in which the stars looked nearer and brighter than their wont, and a sultry stillness which seemed almost tropical. Airy gowns and feathered cloaks were scarcely stirred by the soft warm air, as Vanessa's guests alighted from the line of carriages on the bridge, a line that extended all the length of the road as far back as the old parish church, where the deep-toned clock was striking the first hour of morning before the last carriage had deposited its occupants on the bridge, and the last of the ten electric launches had moved from the pier.

One o'clock, and even Hammersmith-with silvered roofs and glorified chimneys, under the moon that rode triumphant in a dark blue sky, the moon in her fullest, maturest beauty -had a picturesque semi-Dutch appearance, as wharf and warehouse lay fast asleep.

The Thames, under that enchanting light, rippled and danced like a river of molten gold; and the shore, the poor suburban shore that was once only a line of willows against a background of cornfields-even the shore of villadom had a vague charm when seen betwixt purple sky and golden river.

The midnight assembly was a success. It had allowed people to go to other parties, to prime themselves for pleasure. Everybody had dined somewhere. Most of the young people had come away from dances they had just looked at-a valse, an ice, and good-bye.

"Going on to Mrs. Stormont's." "Ridiculous, ain't it?"

"A long drive!" "Haven't the least idea what's going to happen." "An American surprise party, don't you know." Rich?" 99 66 Oh, stupendously." "Sure to do us well." And now on the ten launches, each holding thirty people,