Lady Holme started. Till the footman spoke she had not quite realised how deeply interested she was in the conversation. She helped herself to some ice.

"You can go on, Mr. Pierce," she said when the man had gone.

"But you understand."

She shook her head, smiling. Her body still looked soft and attractive, and deliciously feminine.

"Miss Schley happens to have some vague resemblance to you in height and colouring. She is a clever mimic. She used to be a professional mimic."

"Really!"

"That was how she first became known."

"In America?"

"Yes."

"Why should she imitate me?"

"Have you been nice to her?"

"I don't know. Yes. Nice enough."

Robin shook his head.

"You think she dislikes me then?"

"Do women want definite reasons for half the things they do? Miss Schley may not say to herself that she dislikes you, any more than you say to yourself that you dislike her. Nevertheless--"

"We should never get on. No."

"Consider yourselves enemies--for no reasons, or secret woman's reasons.

It's safer."

Lady Holme looked down the gallery again. Miss Schley's fair head was bending forward to some invisible person.

"And the mimicry?" she asked, turning again to Robin.

"Can only be applied to mannerisms, to the ninety-ninth part, the inconsiderable fraction of your charm. Miss Schley could never imitate the hidden woman, the woman who sings, the woman who laughs at, denies herself when she is not singing."

"But no one cares for her--if she exists."

There was a hint of secret bitterness in her voice when she said that.

"Give her a chance--and find out. But you know already that numbers do."

He tried to look into her eyes, but she avoided his gaze and got up.

"Take me back to the ballroom."

"You are going to dance?"

"I want to see who's here."

As they passed the next table Lady Holme nodded to Leo Ulford. He bowed in return and indicated that he was following almost immediately. Mrs.

Ulford put down her ear-trumpet, turned her head sharply, and looked at Lady Holme sideways, fluttering her pink eyelids.

"How exactly like a bird she is," murmured Lady Holme.

"Exactly--moulting."

Lady Holme meant as she walked down the gallery; to stop and speak a few gay words to Miss Schley and her husband, but when she drew near to their table Lord Holme was holding forth with such unusual volubility, and Miss Schley was listening with such profound attention, that it did not seem worth while, and she went quietly on, thinking they did not see her. Lord Holme did not. But the American smiled faintly as Lady Holme and Robin disappeared into the hall. Then she said, in reply to her animated companion:

"I'm sure if I am like Lady Holme I ought to say _Te Deum_ and think myself a lucky girl. I ought, indeed."

Lady Holme had not been in the ballroom five minutes before Leo Ulford came up smiling.

"Here I am," he remarked, as if the statement were certain to give universal satisfaction.

Robin looked black and moved a step closer to Lady Holme.

"Thank you, Mr. Pierce," she said.

She took Leo Ulford's arm, nodded to Robin, and walked away.

Robin stood looking after her. He started when he heard Carey's voice saying:

"Why d'you let her dance with that blackguard?"

"Hulloa, Carey?"

"Come to the supper-room. I want to have a yarn with you. And all this"--he made a wavering, yet violent, gesture towards the dancers--"might be a Holbein."

"A dance of death? What nonsense you talk!"

"Come to the supper-room."

Robin looked at his friend narrowly.

"You're bored. Let's go and take a stroll down Park Lane."

"No. Well, then, if you won't--"

"I'll come."

He put his arm through Carey's, and they went out together.

Lady Holme was generally agreeable to men. She was particularly charming to Leo Ulford that night. He was not an interesting man, but he seemed to interest her very much. They sat out together for a long time in the corner of a small drawing-room, far away from the music. She had said to Robin Pierce that she thought there was something about Leo Ulford that was like her husband, and when she talked to him she found the resemblance even greater than she had supposed.