explanation as entirely natural.  She was wide awake now to the importance of Metropolis and Mr. Jewdwine.  By all means, then, let him cultivate Mr. Jewdwine’s cousin.  And if there had been no Mr. Jewdwine in the case, Flossie would still have smiled on the acquaintance; for it meant social advancement, a step nearer Kensington.  So nobody was more delighted than Flossie when Miss Harden invited Keith to tea in her own room, especially as she was always included in the invitation.

It was Miss Bishop, primed with all the resources of her science, who looked upon these advances with alarm.  It struck Miss Bishop that Miss Harden and Mr. Rickman were going it pretty strong.  She wouldn’t have liked those goings on if she’d been Flossie.  You might take it from her that gentlemen never knew their own minds when there were two to choose from; and Miss Bishop hadn’t a doubt that it was a toss-up between Flossie and Miss Harden.  Miss Harden would be willing enough; anybody could see that.  Ladies don’t keep on asking gentlemen to have tea with them alone in their rooms if they’re not up to something.

It was not only Miss Bishop’s fatal science that led her to these conclusions, but the still more fatal prescience of love.  When Flossie was once securely married to Mr. Rickman the heart of Spinks would turn to her for consolation, that she knew.  It was a matter of common experience that gentlemen’s hearts were thus caught on the rebound.  But if that Miss Harden carried off Rickman, there would be nothing left for Flossie but to marry Spinks, for the preservation of her trousseau and her dignity.  Therefore Miss Bishop was more than ever set on Flossie’s marrying Mr. Rickman.

They were turning over the trousseau, the trousseau which might play such a disastrous part in the final adjustment of Flossie’s mind.

“Your dresses are orfully smart and that,” said Ada; “and yet somehow they don’t seem to do you justice.  It would have been worth your while to go to a tip-top dressmaker, my dear.  You’d have a better chance than that Miss Harden any day.  No, I don’t like you in that powder blue; I don’t, really.”  Miss Bishop was nothing if not frank.

“I never go wrong about a colour,” said Flossie passionately.

“No.  It isn’t the colour.  It’s the cut.  It makes her look as if she ’ad a better figure than you; and that’s nonsense.  You’ve got a bust, and she hasn’t.  Gentlemen don’t care to look at a girl who’s as flat as two boards back and front.  That’s what I say, it’s the cut that gives her her style.”

“No, it isn’t.  It isn’t her clothes at all; it’s the way she carries them.  She may look as if she was well dressed; but she isn’t.”

“Anyhow I like that coat of hers better than yours.”

“It hasn’t got the new sleeves,” said Flossie, fondling her powder-blue.