"Neither have I," Guy added.

Thereupon Leonetta allowed Guy to feel the muscles of her arm.

"Iron!" he ejaculated, while Cleopatra looked on with just a little surprise.

"You might at least say steel," she interjected, trying to sustain her role as one of the juveniles at table.

In the midst of a very prosy conversation with Sir Joseph and Miss Mallowcoid, Mrs. Delarayne found opportunities enough to watch the younger people, and she was not a little relieved to see the cloud gradually lifting from Leonetta's brow. She knew that in the circumstances she had not been too hard, and gathered from a hundred different signs that her relationship to her younger daughter had been materially improved by what had occurred.

Later on in the drawing-room, before the men arrived, however, Leonetta seemed to suffer a relapse into her former mood of excessive sobriety, and it was then that Miss Mallowcoid beckoned her niece to her.

"I think you were unnecessarily cross with me at dinner," Mrs. Delarayne overheard her sister saying.

Leonetta pouted, and with an air of utter indifference turned to Cleopatra.

"I think Guy Tyrrell rather tame, don't you? It was most awful uphill work talking to him all through dinner."

Cleopatra held up a finger admonishingly. "You seemed to be talking animatedly enough," she said.

"Yes," Leonetta began, "all about photography, walking tours, and things that don't matter--" Then she felt Miss Mallowcoid's huge cold hand on her arm.

"Leonetta dear, I said something to you a moment ago," lisped the elderly spinster. And again Mrs. Delarayne looked up to try to catch her daughter's reply.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Bella," said the girl, "but really one does not usually expect to be congratulated on a slip of the tongue, and your--" she burst out laughing.

Mrs. Delarayne thereupon resumed her conversation with Agatha Fearwell, as she was now satisfied that Leonetta was both thoroughly recovered and satisfactorily reformed.

"But I did not congratulate you, I--" her aunt persisted.

"Oh, well," Leonetta interrupted, "it really isn't worth discussing."

In any case it was not discussed, for at this juncture the men appeared.

They distributed themselves anything but haphazardly; Sir Joseph, for instance, seating himself by the side of his hostess; Denis Malster between Leonetta and her sister, and Guy and Stephen, as their diffidence suggested, as remotely as possible from the younger women of the party.

"Now, Leonetta," Sir Joseph began, "tell us something about your school life. You are the only one amongst us who has just come from a strange world."

Leonetta laughed. "Yes, a very strange world," she exclaimed.

Sir Joseph laughed too at what he conceived to be a most whimsical suggestion.

"And did you 'ave nice teachers?" he pursued.

"Miss Tomlinson, the history mistress was my favourite," replied the girl.

Denis remarked that he did not know they taught history at a school of Domesticity.

"Yes, you see," Leonetta replied, "the history of the subject. Cookery since the dawn of civilisation, or something desperate like that."

"Was she nice?" Sir Joseph enquired.

"I thought so," answered the girl, "though she wasn't beautiful. You know, she had that sort of very long chin that you feel you ought to shake hands with."

Sir Joseph laughed and made all kinds of grimaces at Mrs. Delarayne, intended to convey that Leonetta was indeed a chip of the old block.

"That's unkind," said Miss Mallowcoid.

Denis Malster threw out his legs and clasped his hands at the back of his head preparatory to making a speech.

"The heartlessness of flappers!" he murmured. "This is indeed a subject worthy of elaboration. Why is the flapper usually heartless?"

Mrs. Delarayne was quick to perceive the unpleasant possibilities of developing such a theme, particularly in view of what had happened earlier in the evening, and, seeking to save Leonetta's feelings, she valiantly tried to change the subject.

"Well, in any case," she said, addressing Leonetta, "you are none the worse for it, my dear. Two years ago you were such a tomboy you could scarcely get out of the door without chipping a piece off each hip; and now----"

"Yes, now she chips pieces off other people," interposed Miss Mallowcoid.

Leonetta, however, was not attending. Her eyes were for the moment fastened on Denis Malster. He had known how to say just the very thing to provoke her interest. He had as much as declared that she was heartless. He,--a man,--had said this. It was like a challenge. She, who felt all heart, or what the world calls "heart," was strangely moved.

How could he say such a thing? This was the last remark she would have expected from any man. Her curiosity was kindled, and with it her vanity.

She noticed, as her sister had noticed before her, that he was efficient, well-groomed, smart of speech, passably good-looking, independent at least in bearing, hard, at least in appearance, and possessed of a certain gift of irony that could act like a lash.

She began to think more highly of him; in fact the recollection of his last remark actually piqued her now she thought of it again. At last, for sheer decency, she had to look away from him, and as she did so, she observed that Cleopatra averted her eyes from her.

There was a stir in the company. Agatha Fearwell was going to sing, and Miss Mallowcoid went to the piano.

The performance was not above the usual standard of such amateur efforts, and at the end of it the singer was vouchsafed the usual perfunctory plaudits.

Thereupon Sir Joseph requested a song from Cleopatra. This apparently necessitated a long search in the music cabinet during which all the young people rose from their seats. At last a song was found; it was a sort of French folk-song entitled _Les epouseuses du Berry_.

As Cleopatra turned to join her aunt at the piano, however, a spectacle met her eyes which, innocent as it appeared, was nevertheless fatal to her composure.

Denis Malster and Leonetta, facing each other in a far corner of the room, with heads so close that they almost touched, and with hands tightly clasped, were playing the old, old game of trying the strength of each other's wrists, each endeavouring to force the other to kneel.

It was harmless enough,--simply one of those very transparent and very early attempts that are almost unconsciously made by two young people of opposite sexes, to become decently and interestingly in close touch with each other.

Cleopatra's first feeling was one of surprise at Leonetta's being so wonderfully resourceful in engaging the attention of men. When, however, she observed the details of the contest,--the closely gripped hands, the fingers intertwined, the palms now meeting, now parting, and the two smiling faces, Denis Malster's rather attractive figure, appearing to tremendous advantage now, she could not quite see why,--a feeling of uncontrollable alarm took possession of her, and she spread her music with some agitation before her aunt.

Miss Mallowcoid played the opening bars, and still the contest in the far corner did not stop. Denis was not even aware that she--Cleopatra--was about to sing.

At last Mrs. Delarayne, who had not been blind to what was taking place, felt she must interfere. Cleopatra's first note was already overdue.

"Leo, Leo, my dear," she cried, "your sister is going to sing to us."

Leonetta turned round, said she was sorry, released her hands, and she and Denis joined the seated group at some distance from the piano.

The incident, however, was not over yet; for, just as her sister sang her first note, Leonetta, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and her hands discoloured by the struggle, ejaculated loud enough for everyone to hear, "Denis, you're a fibber. Your hands are like iron too!"