“George,” she said, “perhaps, if you’d let me alone perhaps I’d like you better.”

“Perhaps,” he retorted fiercely, “if you wouldn’t make a fool of yourself with those mother’s darlings, I’d like you better.”

“George,” said Honora, “learn to dance.”

“Never!” he cried, but she was gone.  While hovering around the door he heard Mrs. Hayden’s voice.

“Unless I am tremendously mistaken, my dear,” that lady was remarking to Mrs. Dwyer, whose daughter Emily’s future millions were powerless to compel youths of fourteen to dance with her, although she is now happily married, “unless I am mistaken, Honora will have a career.  The child will be a raving beauty.  And she has to perfection the art of managing men.”

“As her father had the art of managing women,” said Mrs. Dwyer.  “Dear me, how well I remember Randolph!  I would have followed him to—­to Cheyenne.”

Mrs. Hayden laughed.  “He never would have gone to Cheyenne, I imagine,” she said.

“He never looked at me, and I have reason to be profoundly thankful for it,” said Mrs. Dwyer.

Virginia Hayden bit her lip.  She remembered a saying of Mrs. Brice, “Blessed are the ugly, for they shall not be tempted.”

“They say that poor Tom Leffingwell has not yet finished paying his debts,” continued Mrs. Dwyer, “although his uncle, Eleanor Hanbury’s father, cancelled what Randolph had had from him in his will.  It was twenty-five thousand dollars.  James Hanbury, you remember, had him appointed consul at Nice.  Randolph Leffingwell gave the impression of conferring a favour when he borrowed money.  I cannot understand why he married that penniless and empty-headed beauty.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Hayden, “it was because of his ability to borrow money that he felt he could afford to.”

The eyes of the two ladies unconsciously followed Honora about the room.

“I never knew a better or a more honest woman than Mary Leffingwell, but I tremble for her.  She is utterly incapable of managing that child.  If Honora is a complicated mechanism now, what will she be at twenty?  She has elements in her which poor Mary never dreamed of.  I overheard her with Emily, and she talks like a grown-up person.”

Mrs. Hayden’s dimples deepened.

“Better than some grown-up women,” she said.  “She sat in my room while I dressed the other afternoon.  Mrs. Leffingwell had sent her with a note about that French governess.  And, by the way, she speaks French as though she had lived in Paris.”

Little Mrs. Dwyer raised her hands in protest.

“It doesn’t seem natural, somehow.  It doesn’t seem exactly—­moral, my dear.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Hayden.  “Mrs. Leffingwell is only giving the child the advantages which her companions have—­Emily has French, hasn’t she?”

“But Emily can’t speak it—­that way,” said Mrs. Dwyer.  “I don’t blame Mary Leffingwell.  She thinks she is doing her duty, but it has always seemed to me that Honora was one of those children who would better have been brought up on bread and butter and jam.”