Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-70.djvu/695

Rh Constance Belmont smiled upon him. "Bravo, Vincent!" she exclaimed softly, "that was worthy of a Talleyrand."

When Helen took her departure Mrs. Manning accompanied her to the front door.

"We have only just moved in here," she remarked, glancing about the hall that seemed to Helen to be in perfect order, "and we are not yet half settled."

They paused near the door, and Helen's eyes fell again on the photograph that had so interested her. "Do you know," she said, smiling now at her groundless fears, "when I first came in I thought that was you."

"I! Why, it doesn't look a bit like me!"

"I know; but I hadn't seen you before, you know, and I imagined that it might be a photograph of the person I was to see."

"That is the beautiful Mrs. Tinsley Burton, a leader of the Smart Set here. You have probably heard of her."

"No—and yet the name does seem rather familiar," returned Helen thoughtfully, and trying to recall where she had heard it before.

"Oh, her name has been in the papers constantly; if you read the New York society news, you could not miss seeing it."

Helen laughed. "But I never read it," she said.

"Neither do I; but I have been entertained by her several times, and hear of all she has been doing. This is her house. She has gone to Europe for two years, and rented it to us just as it was."

"Oh," remarked Helen, as she laid her hand on the door-knob that Herbert had so often touched even in those days while she loved and trusted him in the little apartment in Brooklyn, "it is certainly beautiful."

An unaccountable depression was beginning to settle upon her. She attributed it to the fact that she was obliged to leave this new friend and return to the hated abode on Lexington Avenue.

' [sic]You must come in to see me to-morrow sometime," said Mrs. Manning as they parted; "come about four, if you have nothing to do, and dine with me; then we can go over to the theatre together. You have never been behind the scenes, have you?"

"No, I should love to go!" said Helen, flushing slightly with pleasure at the thought.

When Mrs. Manning returned to the dining-room her husband made her a sweeping court bow. "Permit me to apologize for criticising your advertising venture," he said with dramatic humility.

"Isn't she lovely!" exclaimed Constance, looking from one to the other with a beaming smile as she took her place again at the head of the table, pulling the arm-chair close in, with a sort of girlish ardor.

"She is beautiful!" said Haughtly enthusiastically.