"The deuce we are!" said Mathilda. "All right, Joe: I'll co-operate. The perfect guest: that's me. Where's Cousin Maud?"

Maud was discovered presently in the morning-room. She seemed vaguely glad to see Mathilda, and gave her a cheek to kiss, remarking somewhat disconcertingly: "Poor Joseph is so set on an old-fashioned Christmas!"

"All right, I've no objection to helping him," said Mathilda. "Shall I make paper-chains, or something? Who's coming?"

"Stephen and Paula, and Stephen's fiancee, and of course Mr. Mottisfont."

"It sounds like a riot of fun. Stephen would make any party go with a swing."

"Nathaniel does not care for Stephen's fiancee," Maud stated.

"You don't say!" remarked Miss Clare vulgarly.

"She is very pretty," said Maud.

Mathilda grinned. "So she is," she admitted.

Mathilda was not pretty. She had good eyes, and beautiful hair, but not even in her dewy youth had she been able to deceive herself into thinking that she was good-looking. She had sensibly accepted her plainness, and had, she said, put all her money on style. She was much nearer thirty than twenty; she enjoyed private means; lived in a cottage not uncomfortably far from London; and eked out her income by occasional journalism, and the breeding of bull-terriers. Valerie Dean, who was Stephen's fiancee, vaguely resented her, because she dressed so well, and made her plainness so arresting that she attracted a good deal of attention at parties at which Valerie had confidently expected to draw all eyes upon herself.

"Of course, darling, it isn't that I don't like your cousin," Valerie told Stephen, "but it's so silly to call her striking. Because she's practically hideous, isn't she, Stephen?"