"I would do most things to please you, my dear Mila," answered her cousin, "but I don't think I can do that. You know it's my rule never to visit people that I won't let visit me—and I don't like murdered languages, and being called 'my lady.'"
"Oh, the people are horrid—I say so," answered the Comtesse. "I shall have nothing to do with them, of course—after their ball."
"But surely, it's very low, Mila, that sort of thing. I know people do it nowadays. But really, to be a guest of a person you intend to cut next day———"
"What does it matter? She wants my name on her list; she gets it; I'm not bound to give her anything more. There is nothing unfair about it. She has what she wants, and more than she could expect. Of course, all that kind of persons must know perfectly well that we only go to them as we go to the opera, and have no more to do with them than we have with the opera door-keepers. Of course they know we don't visit them as we visit our own people. But if snobbish creatures like those find pleasure in en-
