At this point Denis was observed to try and snatch back a piece of cake that Leonetta had, in keeping with her customary tactics, previously taken from his plate. In doing so, however, he struck the top of the milk jug with his elbow, and the vessel toppled over and emptied itself upon his own and Leonetta's clothes.

Mrs. Delarayne flushed a little in anger. At any other time she would have laughed with the rest over such an incident, but in the circumstances it was too intimately connected with the cause of her anxiety to be passed over in silence.

"Leo, you really are a pest," she exclaimed. "You simply cannot leave Denis alone one minute. Really, Denis, if you'll excuse my being outspoken, I'm surprised at your encouraging the child!"

"What it is to be young and good-looking!" sighed Vanessa, casting a sidelong glance at the young gentleman in question.

"All right, Peachy!" Leonetta snapped, vexed and almost outraged by her mother's bald statement of the plain truth, "it's only an accident; you needn't be so cross."

Mrs. Delarayne was on the point of administering a stinging lesson to her flapper daughter,--a lesson which that young person would certainly have remembered to the end of her days,--when, suddenly, Wilmott appeared on the lawn in front of the marquee.

"Yes, Wilmott, what is it?" Mrs. Delarayne enquired irritably.

"If you please, mum, will you come and see Miss Cleopatra; she's fallen down in the billiard-room."

"Fallen down in the billiard-room?" everybody repeated.

The whole party were on their legs in an instant.

"Now, what are you all going to do?" cried Mrs. Delarayne, never more herself than when a heavy demand was laid upon her self-possession.

"Please remain where you are, and get on with your tea. I'll go and see what's happened. Agatha!"

Mrs. Delarayne and Agatha, followed by Wilmott, went back to the house, and, as they went, the maid explained that it was a wonder Miss Cleopatra had not killed herself, as her head "was quite close up against the fender."

That evening, on the terrace of Brineweald Park, where the whole party had dined, Mrs. Delarayne and Sir Joseph sat solemnly talking.

"You will have to do something, Joseph," the widow was saying. "He's certainly in your power. Convey to him by some means that he cannot play fast and loose in this way. He accepted the rise of two hundred on the understanding that he would marry."

"Well, my dear Edith, I can't exactly make him marry, can I?" Sir Joseph protested.

"But he has not even proposed yet!" the lady cried.

Sir Joseph grunted.

"Instead, if you please, he is making a fool of himself with Leo, and turning her into an insufferable little prig."

"Not really!"

"Really!"

Sir Joseph grunted again.

"It's making Cleopatra quite ill. Agatha says it is, and I'm sure she's right. She fainted in the billiard-room this afternoon and her head was within an inch of the fender. The poor girl almost killed herself.

Besides, I hate a child to have her head turned by a man of thirty. It's such easy going for him, and she's too young to know the difference between an actor and a coachman."

"I'll see what I can do," said the baronet, stirring himself a little.

"But you'll admit the position is delicate."

"It's so absurd, because Leonetta has not got the marks of the cradle off her back yet."

"A child as fascinating as her dear mother," Sir Joseph interposed, taking the widow's hand.

She brushed his fingers from her. "I've lost patience with him," she cried. "What is it makes these young Englishmen always abandon full-blown maturity for flapperdom? I suppose it is the tradition of their manufacturing race to worship raw material."

"Oh, he's not in love with her," Sir Joseph objected.

In another part of the park Miss Mallowcoid, Agatha, and Cleopatra were walking arm-in-arm. Miss Mallowcoid, always stirred to some act of self-sacrificing devotion by the sight of genuine illness, was making it her duty to give her niece a little healthy exercise before going to bed. Cleopatra would have given a good deal to escape this determined altruism on her aunt's part, but Miss Mallowcoid was not so easily thwarted in the practice of her virtues.

Meanwhile, Denis, surrounded by the rest of the party, was indulging in a form of amusement that he had popularised of late among the younger members of the two households. It consisted in a sort of uneven cock-fight between himself and Gerald Tribe, on the question of religion, and it was punctuated by roars of laughter from Leonetta, Vanessa, Guy Tyrrell, and even Stephen Fearwell; while the unfortunate Mrs. Tribe, feeling that her husband was being made to look ridiculous for the edification of the rest of the party, would repeatedly interrupt the proceedings by urging her spouse to "come to bed." This, however, he always resolutely refused to do, much to the satisfaction of everybody present; and the unequal contest would be continued.

Sometimes the sensitive and sensible woman would interpolate a remark which considerably discomfited her husband's aggressor; and then, hoping to bring the controversy quickly to an end on this note of triumph, would tug vigorously at his coat sleeve. But Incandescent Gerald, hot, excited, beaten, and indignant, was not to be lured away to the marital bed while he still smarted from his opponent's blows, and endeavouring ever afresh to turn the tide of battle, would remain to blunder on into another rout.

At one moment on the evening of the day of Cleopatra's first fall, when the laughter against him rose too high, the moon revealed to Stephen Fearwell that tears of indignation were welling in Mrs. Tribe's eyes; and then thinking of Miss Mallowcoid, and of how this one holiday in the year, away from the hard spinster's cold tyranny, was being spoilt for her by these evening debates, he rose smartly to his feet, clapped the Incandescent Gerald on the back, and tugged at his collar.

"Look here, sir," he cried, "you're beginning to interest me in this Inner Light of yours. Come for a walk and tell me more about it. Perhaps Mrs. Tribe will join us?"

"Oh, don't take them away!" cried Guy Tyrrell, while Leonetta and Vanessa moaned.

"Sorry," said Stephen, "but I honestly want to hear all about it. Come on, Tribe!"

Incandescent Gerald rose, half dazed. He believed in his Inner Light, whatever Denis might have to say against it, and he could hardly resist Stephen's gratifying suggestion. He smiled guilelessly into the young man's face, and he, Stephen, and Mrs. Tribe vanished into the darkness.

"Stephen was a lout to go and do that!" Guy exclaimed.

"I think he noticed that Mrs. Tribe was beginning to cry," said Vanessa.

"Nonsense, Nessy, you must be dreaming!" retorted Denis.

CHAPTER XI

In the full-grown schoolgirl, who stands on the threshold of womanhood, we have a creature who, though probably admirably equipped with normal or even supernormal passions, is, possibly owing to the accident of her age and her position, less prone to be led by passion than by vanity in her first affairs with the other sex.

Standing on the threshold of life as she does, she may be a little too eager to prove that she is fit for the game, fit for the thrills and throbs of the great melodrama. Out of sheer anxiety therefore, without any genuine desire to gratify a passion, but simply with the view of giving her self-esteem the proof that she is mature, she may behave very much as if her heart and passions were involved. And though, in later life, she may develop into a supremely desirable woman, she behaves for the nonce very much like those deplorable people who in all they think and do are actuated by vanity alone.

The dupe in such cases, the fool in such cases, the creature who, owing to his gross misunderstanding of the situation, allows himself to be persuaded by his vanity that he has stimulated _une grande passion_ in an unbroken filly, naturally deserves all he gets. Unfortunately, as the world is at present constituted, his punishment, like that of the modern co-respondent, always falls short of its proper severity.

Now Denis Malster was certainly no fool,--nay, he was probably above the average in intelligence; and yet the speed with which he had succeeded in monopolising Leonetta's attention made him feel in his gratified vanity, so immensely grateful to the girl, that willy-nilly, he found himself drifting all too pleasantly along that warm and intoxicating stream that the nineteenth century called "Love," without feeling either the obligation or even the desire to realise calmly and dispassionately what had actually happened.

Quite recently she had even allowed him to kiss her. It was unspeakable bliss, almost distressing in its transcendent quality. He "had such joy of kissing her," he "had small care to sleep or feed. For the joy to kiss between her brows time upon time" he "was well-nigh dead." How could he be deceived by such unequivocal demonstrations of real passion?

In any case it was too wonderful to be wrong, and if wrong--what then?

The Devil was worth a score of heavens!

He had not carelessly overlooked the other sister. He was not absent-minded where she was concerned. He had resolutely cast her out of his mind. With conscious deliberation he had banished her far beyond his horizon. His only remaining difficulty was not to discover the nature of his next step, but how to take it. He felt an irrevocable destiny bidding him solicit Leonetta's hand, but he rightly foresaw that there might be some difficulty where Mrs. Delarayne was concerned.