"I can imagine it was 'dear,' but I should have thought--!" "It was yellow"-- Nanda helped him out--"if I hadn't kindly told you." Tishy's figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by publicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken the last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quarters, she had shed her leaves.

Her companions could only emphasise by the direction of their eyes the nature of the responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled--a choice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and the effect of her not being dressed.

"Oh I'm hideous--of course I know it," said Tishy.

"I'm only just clean.

Here's Nanda now, who's beautiful," she vaguely continued, "and Nanda--" "Oh but, darling, Nanda's clean too!" the young lady in question interrupted; on which her fellow guest could only laugh with her as in relief from the antithesis of which her presence of mind had averted the completion, little indeed as in Mrs.Grendon's talk that element of style was usually involved.
"There's nothing in such a matter," Vanderbank observed as if it were the least he could decently say, "like challenging enquiry; and here's Harold, precisely," he went on in the next breath, "as clear and crisp and undefiled as a fresh five-pound note." "A fresh one ?"--Harold had passed in a flash from his hostess.