Honora was finding penitence a little difficult.  But her heart was kind.

“Do sit down, Lily,” she begged.  “If I’ve offended you in any way, I’m exceedingly sorry—­I am, really.  You ought to know me well enough to understand that I wouldn’t do anything to hurt your feelings.”

“And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!” continued Mrs. Dallam.  “There were other women dying to come.  And you said you had a headache, and were tired.”

“I was,” began Honora, fruitlessly.

“And you were so popular in Quicksands—­everybody was crazy about you.  You were so sweet and so unspoiled.  I might have known that it couldn’t last.  And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and—­”

“Lily, please don’t say such things!” Honora implored, revolted.

“Of course you won’t be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or Newport.  But you can’t say I didn’t warn you, Honora, that they are a horrid, selfish, fast lot,” Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes with her handkerchief.  “I did love you.”

“If you’ll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,—­” said Honora.

“Reasonable!  I saw you with my own eyes.  Five minutes after you left me they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen.”

“Lily,” Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite themselves to one’s house, it’s a little difficult to refuse them hospitality, isn’t it?”

“Invite themselves?”

“Yes,” replied Honora.  “If I weren’t—­fond of you, too, I shouldn’t make this explanation.  I was tired.  I never felt less like entertaining strangers.  They wanted to play bridge, there wasn’t a quiet spot in the Club where they could go.  They knew I was on my way home, and they suggested my house.  That is how it happened.”

Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.

“May I have one of Howard’s cigarettes?” she asked, and added, after this modest wish had been supplied, that’s just like them.  They’re willing to make use of anybody.”

“I meant,” said Honora, “to have gone to your house this morning and to have explained how it happened.”

Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.

“Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?”, she asked.  “I’m sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it’s exactly like one I ordered on Tuesday.”

The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted.  That Honora was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam’s spirits restored may be inferred from her final remark.

“My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper?  Isn’t it too lovely!  I’m having a little architect make me plans for a conservatory.  You know I’ve always been dying for one—­I don’t see how I’ve lived all these years without it.”