A persistent ringing of the telephone in Fanny Milton's bedroom waked her out of a delightful dream.

She was on shipboard again. It was moonlight, and Lord Loveland was telling her that he really cared a great deal more for her than for Lesley Dearmer. She confessed that she liked him, too; and he was just asking her to come and reign over Loveland Castle as well as his heart, when the distant, though disturbing, notes of an amateur concert in the music room of the Mauretania turned definitely into the shrill bur—r of that wretched telephone. The dream broke like a rainbow bubble, and Fanny sat up in bed, disappointed with life.

It was past ten o'clock, but she had been at a ball the night before, and had not meant to wake till eleven. After the dream realities seemed flat and unprofitable for a minute, and she was angry with the telephone, so angry that she was tempted to spite it by turning over and trying to sleep again. But the hateful thing went on bumbling like a distracted bee; and after all, the simplest way to get rid of the pest was to see what it wanted.

Fanny got up, looking like a cross, pretty child of twelve, with her hanging hair, and the delicate, fluffy nightgown in which she was not cold, because the temperature of her room would have been considered warm for summer.

She seated herself by the telephone and snatched up the receiver as if she were going to shake it. But she soon settled down to an absorbing interest in the give and take of conversation with the instrument.

"Hello!" she said. "Who are you? Oh, Elinor Coolidge—what?—I was in bed. You waked me up. Never mind. It doesn't matter.... Yes, it was a nice enough ball. Were you.... Oh, at Mrs. VanderPot's. How swagger! No, we weren't invited. I didn't care. But Mamma was mad. I don't know what's the matter with Mamma since we got back. She's got a 'chip on her shoulder,' for nearly everyone.... No. Of course we haven't seen the paper. I just told you, you waked me up.... What?... Lord Love—oh, don't call him that! It sounds so cruel. I shall never forget his face at the Wal——Why, Elinor Coolidge, you don't mean it! Waiting in a cheap restaurant.... I don't believe it's true.... In the paper? Well, there's nothing in that.... I know a newspaper man myself.... What? Oh, his name's Tony Kidd. He's great fun. He says he lies all night thinking of lies for all day. Says a pressman must lie all in all, or not at all. If it's his paper.... Yes: 'Light.' Oh, then it's sure to be a joke.... No, I would not like to go and find out for myself. It was bad enough at the Waldorf that night. It just about gave me nervous prostration, and I didn't see how you could take it so coolly as you did, or Mamma either.... No. She likes you. She hasn't a good word for him, now. Says she suspected from the first, and was always trying to pump him and find out things.... Oh, that horrid affair about him and Papa? I don't think she cares much. She says Papa oughtn't to have spoken to him, and then it wouldn't have happened.... Yes, Papa went off to Old Point with that sneery Mr. Mason Mamma detests so.... It was the very next day, I believe.... Who says Papa's back in New York?... Well, if he is, he must be going to surprise Mamma and me. We haven't seen him yet.

"Oh, Elinor, I think it would be horrid to make up a party and go to that restaurant.... Yes, I like slumming and seeing Bohemian places pretty well, at least I think I do.... I haven't done much yet. Mamma has, but she hardly ever took me out with her anywhere, you know, till we went to Europe.... Yes, in Paris.... But here it's different.... Well, I don't believe we'd find him there if we went, but all the same, I don't want to.... Why, I can't help it if you ask Mamma to chaperon a party.... I won't go. Nothing will make me.... I can't answer for her.... I don't know whether she's engaged this evening or not. She hasn't been going out so very much since we came home.... Oh, yes. She's sure not to have left the house yet. She's never out till eleven.... Who? The Comte de Rocheverte?... I met him at the ball last night.... What?... He was at Mrs. VanderPot's dinner first?... Took you in?... Yes, he did speak to me of you, when I danced with him.... Oh, it was only one waltz, but I tore my frock, so we sat out the last part. I can't dance with Frenchmen: they hop so—and twirl you about.... It was only that he asked me if I knew you.... Of course he said he thought you beautiful. Everyone thinks so. He told me he met you at Major Cadwallader Hunter's lunch at Sherry's, two days after we got home.... No, the Major didn't ask us. Mamma says he's turned the cold shoulder to her lately. I don't know why.... Yes, the Count is rather good-looking. As handsome as ... oh, nothing to compare! You know he isn't.... Pooh, I don't think so much of French titles, as all that.... I suppose people will be nice to him.... Yes, quite good enough for a flirtation, but.... You're welcome to your old Comte.... It's no inducement to me, if he joins the party. It may be to Mamma.... You can ask her.... Well, I think it would be jolly bad form of you all to go to such a place and stare at him, if it could be true that he ... yes, perhaps 'jolly bad form' was an expression of his. I don't care if it was.... Oh, I suppose all the horrid things about him must be true, because the news wouldn't have come the way it did, if they weren't. But I did like him, and I won't say I didn't now, just because he's down in the world.... Lucky not to go to prison? Why, he didn't defraud anybody, exactly. He came over here to ... well, perhaps he did. But he didn't do it, anyhow.... I don't believe he stayed in New York after what happened. Everyone who knew anything about it, said he probably slipped out of town that same night, for fear of trouble.... Why, abroad somewhere, I should think.... I would, if I had been in his place.... Not money enough to go away anywhere? Oh, he must have had some.... How too awful if it should be true!... No, I wouldn't see him again for anything—not if you'd give me your diamond dog-collar to do it.... I think if you and Mamma and your Comte de Rocheverte go you'll be just like ancient Romans watching the martyrs eaten up by lions.... Not much like a Christian martyr? Well, no, perhaps not. Like going to see gladiators fight and kill each other, then.... Elinor Coolidge, hearing you talk that way makes me just see how you'd look dressed like a Roman lady, sitting on a marble seat beside Nero or some other wicked old horror, and putting your thumb down when it meant a man's death. Yes, you would.... I believe you were a Roman woman in another state of existence.... I won't talk about it any more.... You can ring up Mamma, if you like.... Goodbye!"

Down went the receiver, and back scrambled little Fanny Milton into her lavender-scented bed, shivering, not with cold, but with emotion. Her telephone was silent at last, but she could not find her way into the dream again. The door of that dream was shut forever; and Fanny was not jealous even of Lesley Dearmer now.

"I wonder if she knows—if he ever wrote to her?—they were such friends," the girl said to herself, with the cover pulled up to her small chin, and the big eyes that had overflowed for Loveland, staring through the pink twilight of her curtained room. What if it's true about that restaurant—if he were starving?

After all, it was no use to try and sleep again. Fanny rang for the prim maid her mother had imported for her from England, and demanded the tea and toast which that maid said all well-regulated English ladies took on waking. Then, as if on a second thought, she added: "Oh, you may bring me the morning paper. It must be "New York Light." If it isn't in the house, please tell them to send out for it."

But it was in the house. Mrs. Milton had been absorbing "Light" with her tea and toast; and when her telephone bell rang for the unfolding of Miss Coolidge's amusing plan, she said she would have a great deal of pleasure in chaperoning a "slumming party" to Alexander the Great's. She had an engagement for the evening, but she would break it in order to go. She quite understood that Elinor did not care to mention the expedition to Mr. Coolidge. Men had such funny ideas about things, and he mightn't approve, but it would be all right if he didn't know, and a great lark. Elinor was to ask the Comte de Rocheverte, of course, and tell him that Mrs. Milton had consented to be the chaperon.