“Shall I tell you about the auction?” asked Maggie.

“Oh, please, if you would be so kind.  I suppose, as you were present, such a thing could not really lower the standard of the college?” These words came from Susan Duncan, who looked at Hammond as she spoke.  She was his cousin and very fond of him.

“Please tell us about the auction,” he said, looking full at Maggie.

“I will,” she replied, answering his gaze with a flash of repressed irritation.  “The auction was splendid fun!  One of our girls was in debt, and she had to sell her things.  Oh, it was capital!  I wish you could have seen her acting as her own auctioneer.  Some of us were greedy and wanted her best things.  I was one of those.  She sold a sealskin jacket, an expensive one, quite new.  There is a legend in the college that eighty guineas were expended on it.  Well, I bid for the sealskin and it was knocked down to me for ten.  It is a little too big for me, of course, but when it is cut to my figure, it will make a superb winter garment.”

Maggie was clothed now in velvet and sable; nothing could be richer than her attire; nothing more mocking than her words.

“You were fortunate,” said Susan Duncan.  “You got your sealskin at a great bargain.  Didn’t she, Geoffrey?”

“I don’t think so,” replied Hammond.

“Why not?  Oh, do tell us why not,” cried the sisters eagerly.

He bowed to them, laughed as lightly as Maggie would have done and said in a careless tone:  “My reasons are complex and too many to mention.  I will only say now that what is objectionable to possess can never be a bargain to obtain.  In my opinion, sealskin jackets are detestable.”

With these words he strode across the room and seated himself with a sigh of relief by Priscilla’s side.

“What are you doing all by yourself?” he said cheerfully.  “Is no one attending to you?  Are you always to be left like a poor little forsaken mouse in the background?”

“I am not at all lonely,” said Prissie.

“I thought you hated to be alone.”

“I did, the other day, in that drawing-room; but not in this.  People are all kind in this.”

“You are right.  Our hostess is most genial and sympathetic.”

“And the guests are nice, too,” said Prissie; “at least, they look nice.”

“Ay, but you must not be taken in by appearances.  Some of them only look nice.”

“Do you mean—­” began Prissie in her abrupt, anxious voice.

Hammond took alarm.  He remembered her peculiar outspokenness.

“I don’t mean anything,” he said hastily.  “By the way, are you fond of pictures?”

“I have scarcely ever seen any.”

“That does not matter.  I know by your face that you can appreciate some pictures.”

“But, really, I know nothing of art.”

“Never mind.  If the painter who paints knows you——­”

“The painter knows me?  I have never seen an artist in my life.”