there; but if he had overdone it in dressing for so small an affair, he
was not alone, and he was not sorry. He was sensible of a better
personal effect than the men in frock-coats and cut-aways were making,
and he perceived with self-satisfaction that his evening dress was of
better style than that of the others who wore it; at least no one else
carried a crush hat.--

At forty-one a man is still very much of a boy, and Colville was
obscurely willing that Mrs. Bowen, whose life since they last met at an
evening party had been passed chiefly at New York and Washington, should
see that he was a man of the world in spite of Des Vaches. Before she
had decided which of the company she should first present him to, her
daughter came up to his elbow with a cup of tea and some bread and
butter on a tray, and gave him good-evening with charming correctness of
manner. "Really," he said, turning about to take the cup, "I thought it
was you, Mrs. Bowen, who had got round to my side with a sash on. How do
you and Miss Effie justify yourselves in looking so bewitchingly alike?"

"You notice it, then?" Mrs. Bowen seemed delighted.

"I did every moment you were together to-day. You don't mind my having
been so personal in my observations?"

"Oh, not at all," said Mrs. Bowen, and Colville laughed.

"It must be true," he said, "what a French lady said to me at the
_table-d'hote_ dinner to-night: 'the Amerhicans always strhike the note
of perhsonality.'" He neatly imitated the French lady's guttural accent.

"I suppose we do," mused Mis. Bowen, "and that we don't mind it in each