"Nina is here. You remember her, don't you? She's a widow now, you know.

Very sweet, very bright. Extremely good company."

"Was she happily married?" Caryll asked, trying to look unconcerned.

"Why--er-r--I don't know. They went out to India, and he was killed in an accident. Cleaning a gun, you know. It was never very clear how it happened. n.o.body ever knew. She's in half-mourning still."

"They were _not_ happy," contributed Kneedrock in his resounding undertone. Then he lounged close. "I know," he added sharply. "She's a tiger come human, and Darling was her prey--some of her prey."

Lady Bellingdown was trying to laugh, though not very successfully.

"What awful things you say, Nibbetts!" she sighed.

Carleigh stared in silence.

"It's true," the viscount pursued. "She's a reincarnated man-eater. She likes to take chaps and tear them and maul them and drive the souls out of them with pats that they're too far gone to feel!"

Every one was listening. Carleigh's pallor had gone white as paper. But it was the whiteness of intense interest rather than of alarm.

"Oh, I say!" exclaimed the duke, swallowing hurriedly. "I say, Kneedrock! What you mean is that she's uncommonly amusing. That's so, and that's all you mean. Only you put it a bit strongly. But that's what you mean."

Nibbetts shrugged his broad, heavy shoulders.

"Have it your own way," he grumbled. "I know what I mean, and I know what I know. You just watch her eyes get narrow, and then you wait a month. They narrow when a new man appears; and in a month she's licking his blood from her paws!"

"Oh, how very rude you are!" Lady Bellingdown chided. "Really, you know, I won't have it. You sha'n't say another word. No, I won't have it!"

Carleigh looked down at his tea. A queer flush had succeeded the pallor--a flush of still livelier interest to which Kneedrock's remarks had stung him.

He wondered what a reincarnated tigress would be like. A pleasant thrill charged through him for the first time in quite five weeks.

And just then the door at the end of the hall opened and Nina Darling trod lightly in. She had been walking and still had on her hat--a hat of yellow felt with c.o.c.ks' plumes sifting backward.

In her hand she carried a man's walking-stick, and by her side stalked a great black staghound.

Sir Caryll took her all in instantly. And remembering the reference to half-mourning, wondered whether it was expressed in the hound. Certainly there was no other sign, for her frock was a pale tan frieze and her boots were but a shade darker.

"I am very late," she cried, and her clear voice rang across them like a bell. "But I am forgivable. I found the quaintest little church, and I have been praying. Yes, only fancy! I've been down on my knees begging not to do wrong, because--" she looked at them all and laughed--"because I feel just like doing wrong and I don't want to."

"You'll do it," snarled Kneedrock, _sotto-voce_.

"You know Caryll Carleigh, don't you, dear?" asked Lady Bellingdown.

She turned her big violet eyes his way, and he, watching eagerly, saw them fold to slits, just as Kneedrock had said. And Kneedrock saw them, too.

"And you prayed to be kept from mischief, eh?" he mused. "But of course you didn't mean it."

She crossed to Carleigh's side and sat down there. "And I prayed for others, too," she told him. "For you." With a laugh. "You need it; don't you?"

"I need it," he answered shortly. "Yes, surely."

She pulled off her heavy gloves and gave them, with the stick, to the staghound, which walked gravely away at once.

"Did you walk far?" Lady Bellingdown asked.

"Rather. To the Pine Needles."

"Why, that's twelve miles," said Lord Waltheof.

"Perhaps."

Carleigh stared more frankly at her--at her head of gold, her brow of fairest ivory, set with gems of living amethyst beneath; at her long, sinuous figure, which suggested Lilith and the medieval conception of an angel as well.

When she lifted her eyes to him and smiled, he realized that it was the first really natural smile that he had encountered in a month.

Something cold within him warmed once more. The feminine then still held that which could affect him. His heart, after all, was not utterly dead.

He returned the smile, and the slits grew yet more narrow. And as they had seemed to young Andrews, on a night at Simla, and to Heaven only knows how many other men at Heaven only knows how many other places, so they seemed to him--cleft opals, with the devil splitting the hairs of the lashes that kept them from scorching a mere masculine mortal.

"I remember you as a little girl," he murmured.

"First blood," said Kneedrock, who had been listening, in a half-whisper to the duke.

"Yes, but you know she'll brace him up," returned his grace. "She really will. My word, but she's very bracing, is Nina. I like her. I always have."

"He'll be very glad to creep back, scratched and minus one ear, and marry his fiancee in six months," rejoined the honorable viscount with bitter cynicism.

"Do you really think so?" asked the duke.

"Think so! I know it," yawned Kneedrock. "She doesn't care who rattles the bones, once she's had the meat."

CHAPTER XI

Things One Shouldn't Say

When the men came in after dinner that evening Mrs. Darling sat alone in a huge red satin _causeuse_; one of those queer, hard, tufted royal things that fashion pitched in among the wigs and powder of one past period.

She wore a gown of gray gauze with bands of beaded and jeweled fringe at corsage and knees. Few women can wear gray. Nina could, and did.

The other women were grouped near, talking, but not with her. They had not shunted her; but she had gone apart and sat so. It was her way when the time for the reappearance of the men drew near. n.o.body misconstrued.

They all understood.

"And yet, how she does make a party go, you know!" whispered her hostess to the d.u.c.h.ess. "She's really quite wonderful at it."

"I like her," confessed the d.u.c.h.ess. "She's such nice lines about her waist, too, hasn't she?"

"Y-yes," faltered Lady Bellingdown, "she's quite a picture. I do wish Nibbetts wouldn't pitch into her so. It's very nasty of him."