house at seven o'clock to don the impromptu fancy dress which her maid had been busy fitting and finishing for the last three days.
"Is that you, mignonne?" called Louis as she went past the open door of the study.
She came in and stood beside the writing-table at which he sat. He looked at her in silence for a moment, drumming his fingers absently upon the blotting-pad in front of him. There was a half-humorous, half-wistful expression in his eyes as they rested on the small dainty vision in her white frock. She somehow reminded him irresistibly of the child who had crept into his study after her mother's funeral, and told him that she would be a comfort to him.
"It's been a very nice birthday," smiled Zella, in order to break the silence, "and I love these." She touched the pearls he had given her.
"I'm glad of that. They look very well on you."
He paused again.
"So it's been a nice birthday."
In the silence that followed the absently spoken words lay the only question that Louis would ever put to his daughter on the subject that filled both their thoughts.
The breast of her white frock rose and fell rather more quickly than before, and she did not speak.
"Enfin!" he said at last. "You are happy, sweetheart?"
"Yes, very," she whispered emphatically, and kissed him before turning to run upstairs.
In her fancy dress, she lit all the candles in her room, and gazed at herself in the mirror for a long time.
She wore a peasant costume, of the convenient variety which can be called Swiss, Italian, or Norwegian, with equal unreason, and she looked charming. Her soft pale brown hair hung in two thick plaits over her shoulders, and excitement had brought a brilliant flush to her delicately colourless complexion. Her radiant grey eyes were shining as she looked at her own reflection.
Alison St. Craye knocked at the door, and showed her disregard for conventionality by entering without pausing to receive the customary permission.
Zella faced her critical gaze confidently.
The value of Miss St. Craye's standards had diminished with strange rapidity in the last few days, and Zella's new sense of security was never more apparent to her than in the moment when, insensitive alike to Alison's praise or blame, she heard her murmured comment:
"Charming, no doubt. But why—why so conventional?"
"Is it?" she retorted, with an indifference that was not assumed. "It was all I could find on the spur of the moment, and I adore blue."
"Crude," smiled Alison, raising her eyebrows. "However, subtle colours would be quite unsuited to you, and you look—charming."
Her slight pause before the adjective contrived to make it sound kindly contemptuous.
Zella noted, with an increasing sense of triumph, that she had no perceptible feelings of mortification.
In her turn she spoke kindly:
"Nothing could be lovelier than what you're wearing yourself. Do tell me the period."
Alison folded her long, early Italian hands before her, turned her head slightly over one shoulder, and smiled slowly, her eyes half shut.
Zella waited in vain for a reply.
"Isn't it Italian?" she hazarded.
Alison still said nothing, but the smile perceptibly stiffened
"Anyhow, it is delightfully original," Zella felt it safe to remark.
Alison uncrossed her hands, and tapped Zella rather smartly on the shoulder.
"You have not the artist's eye," she said, with the light laugh of extreme annoyance.
The affair remained mysterious to Zella until St. Algers, waiting for them at the foot of the stairs, greeted Alison's appearance with the enthusiasm of a creator.
"Monna Lisa!" he exclaimed.
St. Algers himself, with an ingeniously contrived hump, represented Polichinel, and indulged in an amount of gesticulation that was a sore trial to the patience of Mrs. Lloyd-Evans. But St. Algers was not destined to be the greatest thorn in her side that evening.
James Lloyd-Evans had elected to garb himself in the skullcap and scarlet robes of a Cardinal.
His appearance was greeted with a burst of applause, in which the delighted St. Algers, who had himself devised the costume and superintended the manipulation of the old red curtains of which it was mainly composed, joined almost with ecstasy.
"Admirable! Perfect!" he cried rapturously. "You are the very type—only too young, a shade too young. But that nose and that forehead—you see what I mean?"
He turned to Louis, and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans drew her son into a corner of the room by means of that grave magnetic look which he had spent so much of his boyhood in vainly endeavouring to ignore.
"My dear boy!" she said gently—" a Cardinal of the Church of Rome?"
"There are no Cardinals in any other Church, mother," urged James. "It had to be Rome or not at all."
"Then, why not not at all, James? One does not want to put you out of conceit with yourself, but surely you see that this is very unsuitable. We know very well that in the Middle Ages there were some very strange people about, but immorality is hardly a subject for jesting."
'' But, my dear mother, I am not jesting about immorality! I am merely representing a Cardinal in the abstract, not any one particular monster of iniquity."
"That does not make it any better, James, and I only hope that with Cardinal's clothes you are not putting on Cardinal's tricks of twisting the truth about. One knows what a name Jesuits have made for themselves, j and they are all tarred with the same brush," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with melancholy impartiality.
"I will do my best not to push the impersonation to those limits," replied James dryly.
"Very well, my boy. I quite understand, and young people don't always quite think what they are about, I j know. I dare say you only thought of wearing a nice bright colour, and didn't realize that it might seem in rather bad taste to recall intrigues and scandals that are better forgotten. Especially with so many more or less French people about."
She cast a disparaging glance round the room.
"St. Algers, who is quite ten times as French as the average Frenchman, originated the whole affair, and rigged up this costume himself, so I presume his feelings will survive the strain."
"Very likely," said his mother, "expecially as he probably has no feelings at all. He is what I call a man-milliner, and I cannot imagine how Louis can encourage . him as he does. But, as I always say, Jimmy, there are others, and if he has no shame, it does not follow that other people have none."
'Very well," said James resignedly, "I will tell them that I am not a French Cardinal. I will be an English one."
"That would be most tactless,
