THE INAUGURAL SOIREE.

"Oh, Lord Silverdale," cried Lillie exultantly when he made his usual visit the next afternoon. "At last I have an unexceptional candidate. We shall get under weigh at last. I am so pleased because papa keeps bothering about that inaugural soirÉe. You know he is staying in town expressly for it. But what is the matter?—You don't seem to be glad at my news."

"I am afraid you will be grieved at mine," he replied gravely. "Look at this in to-day's Moon."

Sobered by his manner, she took the paper. Then her face grew white. She read, in large capitals:

"I called at the Old Maids' Club yesterday," writes a Moon woman, "to get some wrinkles, which ought to be abundant in such a Club, though they are not. Miss Dulcimer, the well-known authoress, is one of the loveliest and jolliest girls of the day. Of course I went as a candidate, with a trumped-up story about my unhappy past, which Miss Dulcimer will, I am sure, forgive me, in view of the fact that it was the only way of making her talk freely for the benefit of my readers."

Lillie's eye glanced rapidly down the collection of distortions. Then she dropped the Moon.

"This is outrageous," she said. "I can never forgive her."

"Why, is this the candidate you were telling me about?" asked Silverdale in deeper concern.

"I am afraid it is!" said Lillie, almost weeping. "I took to her so, we talked ever so long. Even Wee Winnie did not possess the material for all these inaccuracies."

"What is this woman's name?"

"Wilkins—I already called her Diana."

"Diana?" cried Silverdale. "Wilkins? Great heavens, can it be?"

"What is the matter?"

"It must be. Wilkins has married his Diana. It was Mrs. Diana Wilkins who called upon you—not Miss at all."

"What are you talking about? Who are these people?"

"Don't you remember Wilkins, the Moon-man that I was up in a balloon with? He was in a frightful quandary then about his approaching marriage. He did not know what to do. It tortured him to hear anyone ask a question because he was always interviewing people and he got to hate the very sound of an interrogation.—I told you about it at the time, don't you remember?—and he knew that marriage would bring into his life a person who would be sure to ask him questions after business hours. I was very sorry for the man and tried to think of a way out, but in vain, and I even promised him to bring the Old Maids' Club under the notice of his Diana. Now it seems he has hit on the brilliant solution of making her into a Lady Interviewer, so that her nerves, too, shall be hypersensitive to interrogatives, and husband and wife shall sit at home in a balsamic restfulness permeated by none but categorical propositions. Ah me! well, I envy them!"

"You envy them?" said Lillie.

"Why not? They are well matched."

"But you are as happy as Wilkins, surely."

"Query. It takes two to find happiness."

"What nonsense!" said Lillie.

She had been already so upset by the treachery and loss of the misunderstood Diana, that she felt ready to break down and shed hot tears over these heretical sentiments of Silverdale's. He had been so good, so patient. Why should he show the cloven hoof just to-day?

"Miss Dolly Vane," announced Turple the magnificent.

A strange apparition presented itself—an ancient lady quaintly attired. Her dress fell in voluminous folds—the curious full skirt was bordered with velvet, and there were huge lace frills on the elbow-sleeves. Her hair was smoothed over her ears and she wore a Leghorn hat. There were the remains of beauty on her withered face but her eyes were wild and wandering. She curtseyed to the couple with old-fashioned grace, and took the chair which Lord Silverdale handed her.

Lillie looked at her inquiringly.

"Have I the pleasure of speaking to Miss Dulcimer?" said the old lady. Her tones were cracked and quavering.

"I am Miss Dulcimer," replied Lillie. "What can I do for you?"

"Ah, yes, I have been reading about you in the Moon to-day. Wee Winnie and Lillie Dulcimer! Wee Winnie! It reminds me of myself. They call me Little Dolly, you know." She simpered in a ghastly manner.

Lillie's face was growing pale. She could not speak.

"Yes, yes of course," said Silverdale smiling. "They call you Little Dolly."

"Little Dolly!" she repeated to herself, mumbling and chuckling. "Little Dolly."

"So you have been reading about Miss Dulcimer!" said Silverdale pleasantly.

"Yes, yes," said the old lady, looking up with a start. "Little Lillie Dulcimer. Foundress of the Old Maids' Club. That's the thing for me, I thought to myself. That'll punish Philip. That'll punish him for being away so long. When he comes home and finds Little Dolly is an old maid, won't he be sorry, poor Philip? But I can't help it. I said I would punish him and I will."

All the blood had left Lillie's cheek—she trembled and caught hold of Lord Silverdale's arm.

"I shan't have you now, Philip," the creaking tones of the old lady continued after a pause. "The rules will not allow it, will they, Miss Dulcimer? It is not enough that I am young and beautiful, I must reject somebody—and I have nobody else to reject but you, Philip. You are the only man I have ever loved. Oh my Philip! My poor Philip!"

She began to wring her hands. Lillie pressed closer to Lord Silverdale and her grasp on his arm tightened.

"Very well, we will put your name on the books at once," said the Honorary Trier, in bluff, hearty tones.

Little Dolly looked up smiling. "Then I'm an old maid!" she cried ecstatically. "Already! Little Dolly an old maid! Already! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!"

She went off into a burst of uncanny laughter. Lord Silverdale felt Lillie shuddering violently. He disengaged himself from her grasp and placed her on the sofa. Then offering his arm to Miss Dolly Vane, who accepted it with a charming smile, and a curtsey to Miss Dulcimer, he led her from the apartment. When he returned Lillie was weeping half-hysterically on the sofa.

"My darling!" he whispered. "Calm yourself." He laid his hand tenderly on her hair. Presently the sobs ceased.

"Oh, Lord Silverdale!" she said in a shaken voice. "How good you are! Poor old lady! Poor old lady!"

"Do not distress yourself. I have taken care she shall get home safely."

"Little Dolly! how tragic it was!" whispered Lillie.

"Yes, it was tragic. Probably it is not now so sad to her as it is to us, but it is tragic enough, heaven knows. Lillie,"—he trembled as he addressed her thus for the first time—"I am not sorry this has happened. The time has come to put an end to all this make-believe. This Old Maids' Club of yours is a hollow mockery. You are playing round the fringes of tragedy—it is like warming your hands at a house on fire, wherein wretched beings are shrieking for help. You are young and rich and beautiful—Heaven pity the women who have none of these charms. Life is a cruel tragedy for many—never crueller than when its remorseless laws condemn gentle loving women to a crabbed and solitary old age. To some all the smiles of fortune, the homage of all mankind—to others all the frowns of fate and universal neglect, aggravated by contumely. You have felt this, I know, and it is as a protest that you conceived your club. Still can it ever be a serious success? I love you, Lillie, and you have known it all along. If I have entered into the joke, believe me, I have sometimes taken it as seriously as you. Come! Say you love me, too, and let us end the tragi-comedy."

Lillie was obstinately silent for a moment, then she dried her eyes, and with a wan little smile said, in tones which she vainly strove to render those of the usual formula: "What poem have you brought me to-day?"

"To-day I have brought no poem, but I have lived one," said Lord Silverdale, taking her soft unresisting hand. "But, like Lady Clara Vere de Vere, you put strange memories in my head, and I will tell you some verses I made in the country in my callow youth, when the world was new.

"PASTORAL.

Lillie's hand pressed her lover's with involuntary tenderness, but she had turned her face away. Presently she murmured:

"But think what you are asking me to do? How can I, the President of the Old Maid's Club, be the first recreant?"

"But you are also the last to leave the ship," he replied, smiling. "Besides, you are not legally elected. You never came before the Honorary Trier. You were never a member at all, so have nothing to undo. If you had stood your trial fairly, I should have plucked you, my Lillie, plucked you and worn you nearest my heart. It is I who have a position to resign—the Honorary Triership—and I resign it instanter. A nice trying time I have had, to be sure!"

"Now, now! I set my face against punning!" said Lillie, showing it now, for the smiles had come to hide the tears.

"Pardon, Rainbow," he answered.

"Why do you call me Rainbow?"

"Because you look it," he said. "Because your face is made of sunshine and tears. Go and look in the glass. Also because—well, wait and I will fashion my other reason into rhyme and send it you on our wedding morn."

"Poetry made while you wait," said Lillie, laughing. The laugh froze suddenly on her lips, and a look of horror overswept her face.

"What is it, dearest?" cried her lover, in alarm.

"Wee Winnie! How can we face Wee Winnie?"

"There is no need to break the truth to her—we can simply get rid of her by telling her she has never been elected, and never will be."

"Why," said Lillie, with a comic moue, "that would be harder to tell her than the truth. But we must first of all tell father. I am afraid he will be dreadfully disappointed at missing that inaugural soirÉe after all. You know he has been staying in town expressly for it. We have some bad quarters of an hour before us."

They sought the millionaire in his sanctum but found him not. They inquired of Turple the magnificent, and learned that he was in the garden. As they turned away, the lovers both simultaneously remarked something peculiar about the face of Turple the magnificent. Moved by a common impulse, they turned back and gazed at it. For some seconds they could not at all grasp the change that had come over it—but at last, and almost at the same instant, they realized what was the matter.

Turple the magnificent was smiling.

Filled with strange apprehensions, Silverdale and Lillie hurried into the garden, where their vague alarm was exchanged for definite consternation. The millionaire was pacing the gravel-paths in the society of a strange and beautiful lady. On closer inspection, the lady turned out to be only too familiar.

"Why it's Wee Winnie masquerading as a woman!" exclaimed Lord Silverdale.

And so it proved—Nelly Nimrod in all the flush of her womanly beauty, her mannish attire discarded.

"Why, what is this, father?" murmured Lillie.

"My child," said the millionaire solemnly. "As you have resolved to be an Old Maid, I—I—well I thought it only my duty to marry. Even the poorest millionaire cannot shirk the responsibilities of wealth."

"But father!" said Lillie in dismay. "I have changed my mind. I am going to marry Lord Silverdale."

"Bless ye, my children!" said the millionaire. "You are a woman, Lillie, and it is a woman's privilege to change her mind. But I am a man and have no such privilege. I must marry all the same."

"But Miss Nimrod has changed her mind, too," said Lillie, quite losing her temper. "And she is not a woman."

"Gently, gently," said the millionaire. "Respect your stepmother to be, if you have no respect for my future wife."

"Lillie," said Miss Nimrod appealingly, "do not misjudge me. I have not changed my mind."

"But you said you could never marry, on the ground that while you would only marry an unconventional man, an unconventional man wouldn't want to marry you."

"Well? Your father is the man I sought. He didn't want to marry me," she explained frankly.

"Oh," said Lillie, taken utterly aback, and regarding her father commiseratingly.

"It is true," he said, laughing uneasily. "I fell in love with Wee Winnie, but now Nelly says she wants to settle down."

"You ought to be grateful to me, Lillie," added Nelly, "for it was solely in the interest of the Old Maid's Club that I consented to marry your father. He was always a danger to the Club; at any moment he might have put forth autocratic authority and wound it up. So I thought that by marrying him I should be able to influence him in its favor."

"No doubt you will make him see the desirability of women remaining old maids," retorted Lillie unappeased.

"Come, come, Lillie, be sensible!" said the millionaire. "Nelly shall give Lillie a good dinner at the Junior Widows, one of those charming dinners you and I have had there, and Lillie please send out the cards for the inaugural soirÉe. I am not going to be done out of that and nothing can now be gained by delay."

"But, sir, how can we inaugurate a Club which has never had any members?" asked Silverdale.

"But what does that matter? Aren't there plenty of candidates without them? Besides, nobody'll know. Each of the candidates will think the others are the members. Tell you what, boy, they shall all dance at Lillie's wedding, and we'll make that the inaugural soirÉe."

"But that would be to publish my failure to the world," remonstrated Lillie.

"Nonsense, dear. It'll be published without that. Trust the Moon. Isn't it better to take the bull by the horns?"

"Well, yes, perhaps you're right," said Lillie hesitating. "But I hope the world will understand that it is only desperation at the collapse of the Old Maids' Club that has driven me to commit matrimony."

She went back to the Club to write out the cards.

"What do you think of my stepmother?" she inquired pathetically of the ex-Honorary Trier.

"What do I think?" said Lord Silverdale seriously. "I think she is the punishment of Providence for your interference with its designs."

The explanatory poem duly came to hand on Lillie's wedding morn. It was written on vellum in the bridegroom's best hand and ran—

RAINBOW.

Besides the friends of the happy pair, nearly all the candidates were present at the inaugural soirÉe of the Old Maids' Club. Not quite all—because Lillie who was rapidly growing conventional did not care to have Clorinda Bell even accompanied by her mother, or by her brother, the Man in the Ironed Mask. Nor did she invite the twins, nor the osculatory Alice. But she conquered her prejudices in other instances, and Frank Maddox, the art critic, came under the convoy of the composer, Paul Horace, and Miss Mary Friscoe was brought by Bertie Smythe. The Writers' Club also sent Ellaline Rand, and an account of the proceedings appeared in the first number of the Cherub. The "Princess" was brought by Miss Primpole, and Captain Athelstan and Lord Arthur came together in unimpaired friendship. Eustasia Pallas and her husband, Percy Swinshell Spatt, both their faces full of the peace that passeth understanding, got a night off for the occasion and came in a hansom paid for out of the week's beer-money. Turple the magnificent, who had seen them at home in the servants' hall, was outraged in his deepest instincts and multiplied occasions for offering them refreshments merely for the pleasure of snorting in their proximity. The great Fladpick (Frank Gray), accompanied by his newly-won bride, Cecilia, made the evening memorable by the presence of the English Shakespeare, Guy Fledgely brought Miss Sybil Hotspur, and his father, the baronet, was under the care of Miss Jack. The lady from Boston wired congratulations on the success of the Club from Yokohama whither she had gone to pick up lacquer-work. Poor Miss Summerson, the lovely May, and the victim of the Valentine were a triad that was much admired. Miss Fanny Radowski, whose Oriental loveliness excited much attention, came, with Martin. Winifred Woodpecker was accompanied by her mother, the resemblance between the two being generally remarked, and Miss Margaret Linbridge seemed to afford Richard Westbourne copious opportunities for jealousy. Even Wilkins was there with his Diana, in an unprofessional capacity, Lillie having relented towards her interviewer on learning that she had been really engaged to Silverplume once and that she had not entirely drawn on the stores of journalistic fancy. Silverplume himself was there, unconscious to what he owed the invitation, and paying marked attention to the unattached beauties. Miss Nimrod promenaded the rooms on the arm of the millionaire. She had improved vastly since she had become effeminate, and Lillie felt she could put up with her, now she would not have to live with her. Even Silverdale's aunt, Lady Goody-Goody Twoshoes could find no fault with Nelly now.

It was a brilliant scene. The apartments of the Old Maids' Club had been artistically decked with the most gorgeous flowers that the millionaire could afford, and the epigrams had been carefully removed so as to leave the rooms free for dancing. As Lillie's father gazed around, he felt that not many millionaires could secure such a galaxy of beauty as circled in the giddy dance in his gilded saloon. It was, indeed, an unexampled gathering of pretty girls—this inaugural soirÉe of the Old Maids' Club, and the millionaire's shirt-front heaved with pride and pleasure and the Letter-Day Cupid that still hung on the wall seemed to take heart of grace again.

"You got my verses this morning, Rainbow mine?" said Silverdale, when the carriage drove off, and the honeymoon began.

It was almost the first moment they had had together the whole day.

"Yes," said Lillie softly. "And I wanted to tell you there are two lines which are truer than you meant."

"I am indeed, a poet, then! Which are they?"

Lillie blushed sweetly. Presently she murmured,

"How did you know that?" she asked, her brown eyes looking ingenuously into his.

"Love's divination, I suppose."

"My father didn't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"About my discovery in the algebra of love?"

"Algebra of love?"

"No, of course he didn't. I don't suppose he ever really understood it," said Lillie with a pathetic smile. "I think I ought to tell you now what it was that made me so—so—you understand."

She put her little warm hand lightly into his and nestled against his shoulder, as if to make amends.

After a delicious silence, for Lord Silverdale betrayed no signs of impatience, Lillie confessed all.

"So you see I have loved you all along!" she concluded. "Only I did not dare hope that the chance would come to pass, against which the odds were 5999."

"But great heavens!" cried Lord Silverdale, "do you mean to say this is why you were so cold to me all those long weary months?"

"It is the only reason," faltered Lillie. "But would you have had me defy the probabilities?"

"No, no, of course not. I wouldn't dream of such a thing. But you have miscalculated them!"

"Miscalculated them?"

Lillie began to tremble violently.

"Yes, there is a fallacy in your ratiocination."

"A fallacy!" she whispered hoarsely.

"Yes, you have calculated on the theory that the probabilities are independent, whereas they are interdependent. In the algebra of love this is the typical class of probabilities. The two events—your falling in love with me, my falling in love with you—are related; they are not absolutely isolated phenomena as you have superficially assumed. It is our common qualities which make us gravitate together, and what makes me love you is the same thing that makes you love me. Thus the odds against our loving each other are immensely less than you have ciphered out."

Lillie had fallen back, huddled up, in her corner of the carriage, her face covered with her hands.

"Forgive me," said Lord Silverdale penitently. "I had no right to correct your mathematics on your wedding-day. Say two and two are six and I will make it so."

"Two and two are not six and you know it," said Lillie firmly, raising her wet face. "It is I who have to ask forgiveness for being so cruel to you. But if I have sinned, I have sinned in ignorance. You will believe that, dearest?"

"I believe anything that comes from my Rainbow's lips," said Lord Silverdale. "Why, they are quite white! Let me kiss them rosy again."

Like a naughty child that has been chastened by affliction she held up her face obediently to meet his. The lips were already blushing.

"But confess," she said, while an arch indefinable light came into the brown eyes, "confess we have had a most original courtship."