THE DUCHESS ASKS A QUESTION Clara stepped through the high French window, and with skirts a little raised crossed the lawn.

Lindsay, who was following her, stopped to light a cigarette.
"We're getting frightfully modern," she remarked, turning and waiting for him.

"Mrs.Handsell and I ought to have come out here, and you and uncle ought to have stayed and yawned at one another over the dinner-table." "You have an excellent preceptress--in modernity," he remarked.

"May I ?" "If you mean smoke, of course you may," she answered.

"But you may not say or think horrid things about my best friend.