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 Claudel does not seem to admire Miss Red's interpretations as we do," he murmured.

"Really!" and Mrs. Durham looked with such innocent reproof at her unenthusiastic friend that Victoria all but lost her self-control.

"Ah!" she went on, "she hasn't seen Madame Despard faint down-stairs backwards. That is a dream of grace; it always reminds me of Alice, who studied 'drawling and stretching and fainting in coils.'"

"I don't believe I know the lady," Herr Balder remarked.

"Oh, she's Alice Carroll, a friend of our youth and the delight of our old age. There's quite a crush to-day. I see Miss Lewis, Miss Manse, and Mrs. Bonson. When were they admitted? or are they just Mæcenases?"

"Is that one of the passwords of the inner circle?" Victoria inquired; "and have you made a verb—I Maecenas, thou Msecenasest, and he Maecenases?"

Mrs. Durham called Victoria's attention to a couple near them. "There is Mr. Valdeck with a very smart-looking woman. Probably he's 112