She spoke laughingly, as if she wanted him to say no, but would not be very angry if he didn't. Lord Holme tugged his moustache and looked very serious indeed.

"Another!" he ejaculated. "We're always havin' 'em. Any music?"

"No, no, nothing. There are endless dinners that night, and Mrs.

Crutchby's concert with Calve, and the ball. People will only run in and say something silly and run out again."

"Who's comin'?"

"Everybody. All the tiresome dears that have had their cards left."

Lord Holme stared at his varnished boots and looked rather like a puzzled boy at a _viva voce_ examination.

"The worst of it is, I can't be in the country lookin' at a horse that night," he said with depression.

"Why not?"

She hastily added:

"But why should you? You ought to be here."

"I'd rather be lookin' at a horse. But I'm booked for the dinner to Rowley at the Nation Club that night. I might say the speeches were too long and I couldn't get away. Eh?"

He looked at her for support.

"You really ought to be here, Fritz," she answered.

It ended there. Lady Holme knew her husband pretty well. She fancied that the speeches at the dinner given to Sir Jacob Rowley, ex-Governor of some place she knew nothing about, would turn out to be very lengthy indeed--speeches to keep a man far from his home till after midnight.

On the evening of the twelfth Lord Holme had not arrived when the first of his wife's guests came slowly up the stairs, and Lady Holme began gently to make his excuses to all the tiresome dears who had had their cards left at forty-two Cadogan Square. There were a great many tiresome dears. The stream flowed steadily, and towards half-past eleven resembled a flood-tide.

Lady Cardington, Lady Manby, Mr. Bry, Sally Perceval had one by one appeared, and Robin Pierce's dark head was visible mounting slowly amid a throng of other heads of all shapes, sizes and tints.

Lady Holme was looking particularly well. She was dressed in black.

Of course black suits everybody. It suited her even better than most people, and her gown was a triumph. She was going on to the Arkell House ball, and wore the Holme diamonds, which were superb, and which she had recently had reset. She was in perfect health, and felt unusually young and unusually defiant. As she stood at the top of the staircase, smiling, shaking hands with people, and watching Robin Pierce coming slowly nearer, she wondered a little at certain secret uneasinesses--they could scarcely be called tremors--which had recently oppressed her. How absurd of her to have been troubled, even lightly, by the impertinent proceedings of an American actress, a nobody from the States, without position, without distinction, without even a husband.

How could it matter to her what such a little person--she always called Pimpernel Schley a little person in her thoughts--did or did not do?

As Robin came towards her she almost--but not quite--wished that the speeches at the dinner to Sir Jacob Rowley had not been so long as they evidently had been, and that her husband were standing beside her, looking enormous and enormously bored.

"What a crowd!"

"Yes. We can't talk now. Are you going to Arkell House?"

Robin nodded.

"Take me in to supper there."

"May I? Thank you. I'm going with Rupert Carey."

"Really!"

At this moment Lady Holme's eyes and manner wandered. She had just caught a glimpse of Mrs. Wolfstein, a mass of jewels, and of Pimpernel Schley at the foot of the staircase, had just noticed that the latter happened to be dressed in black.

"Bye-bye!" she added.

Robin Pierce walked on into the drawing-rooms looking rather preoccupied.

Everybody came slowly up the stairs. It was impossible to do anything else. But it seemed to Lady Holme that Miss Schley walked far more slowly than the rest of the tiresome dears, with a deliberation that had a touch of insolence in it. Her straw-coloured hair was done exactly like Lady Holme's, but she wore no diamonds in it. Indeed, she had on no jewels. And this absence of jewels, and her black gown, made her skin look almost startlingly white, if possible whiter than Lady Holme's.

She smiled quietly as she mounted the stairs, as if she were wrapt in a pleasant, innocent dream which no one knew anything about.

Amalia Wolfstein was certainly a splendid--a too splendid--foil to her.

The Jewess was dressed in the most vivid orange colour, and was very much made up. Her large eyebrows were heavily darkened. Her lips were scarlet. Her eyes, which moved incessantly, had a lustre which suggested oil with a strong light shining on it. "Henry" followed in her wake, looking intensely nervous, and unnaturally alive and observant, as if he were searching in the crowd for a bit of gold that someone had accidentally dropped. When anyone spoke to him he replied with extreme vivacity but in the fewest possible words. He held his spare figure slightly sideways as he walked, and his bald head glistened under the electric lamps. Behind them, in the distance, was visible the yellow and sunken face of Sir Donald Ulford.

When Miss Schley gained the top of the staircase Lady Holme saw that their gowns were almost exactly alike. Hers was sewn with diamonds, but otherwise there was scarcely any difference. And she suddenly felt as if the difference made by the jewels was not altogether in her favour, as if she were one of those women who look their best when they are not wearing any ornaments. Possibly Mrs. Wolfstein made all jewellery seem vulgar for the moment. She looked like an exceedingly smart jeweller's shop rather too brilliantly illuminated; "as if she were for sale," as an old and valued friend of hers aptly murmured into the ear of someone who had known her ever since she began to give good dinners.

"Here we are! I'm chaperoning Pimpernel. But her mother arrives to-morrow," began Mrs. Wolfstein, with her strongest accent, while Miss Schley put out a limp hand to meet Lady Holme's and very slightly accentuated her smile.

"Your mother? I shall be delighted to meet her. I hope you'll bring her one day," said Lady Holme; thinking more emphatically than ever that for a woman with a complexion as perfect as hers it was a mistake to wear many jewels.

"I'll be most pleased, but mother don't go around much," replied Miss Schley.

"Does she know London?"

"She does not. She spends most of her time sitting around in Susanville, but she's bound to look after me in this great city."

Mrs. Wolfstein was by this time in violent conversation with a pale young man, who always looked as if he were on the point of fainting, but who went literally everywhere. Miss Schley glanced up into Lady Holme's eyes.

"I hoped to make the acquaintance of Lord Holme to-night," she murmured.

"Folks tell me he's a most beautiful man. Isn't he anywhere around?"

She looked away into vacancy, ardently. Lady Holme felt a slight tingling sensation in her cool skin. For a moment it seemed to her as if she watched herself in caricature, distorted perhaps by a mirror with a slight flaw in it.

"My husband was obliged to dine out to-night; unfortunately. I hope he'll be here in a moment, but he may be kept, as there are to be some dreadful speeches afterwards. I can't think why elderly men always want to get up and talk nonsense about the Royal family after a heavy dinner.

It's so bad for the digestion and the--ah, Sir Donald! Sweet of you to turn up. Your boy's been so unkind. I asked him to call, or he asked to call, and he's never been near me."

Miss Schley drifted away and was swallowed by the crowd. Sir Donald had arrived at the top of the stairs.

"Leo's been away in Scotland ever since he had the pleasure of meeting you. He only came back to-night."

"Then I'm not quite so hurt. He's always running about, I suppose, to kill things, like my husband."

"He does manage a good deal in that way. If you are going to the Arkell House ball you'll meet him there. He and his wife are both--"

"How did do! Oh, Charley, I never expected to see you. I thought it wasn't the thing for the 2nd to turn up at little hay parties like this.

Kitty Barringlave is in the far room, dreadfully bored. Go and cheer her up. Tell her what'll win the Cup. She's pale and peaky with ignorance about Ascot this year. Both going to Arkell House, Sir Donald, did you say? Bring your son to me, won't you? But of course you're a wise man trotting off to bed."

"No. The Duke is a very old friend of mine, and so--"

"Perfect. We'll meet then. They say it's really locomotor ataxia, poor fellow I but--ah, there's Fritz!"