"In any case, Captain Dodwell, you would have been too late." She looked him straight in the face, then she turned to her partner. "Will you please take me away?"

It was not strange that, as the pair moved off, Anthony Dodwell did not look happy; if she had flicked a whip in his face her intention could hardly have been plainer. He was conscious that while there were smiles on some of the faces about him, and while some observed him with curious eyes, there were others who kept their eyes carefully averted.

On the whole, he carried the thing off uncommonly well. He strolled away, and presently was dancing with a lady whose charms were not so obvious as they possibly once had been. While he danced he was saying things to himself which would have surprised his partner if she could have heard them.

"What the devil did the little cat mean by that? What have I ever done to her? I swear I've done nothing. I expect that the tale is being told all round the room at this moment; people will be taking it for granted that I've behaved to her like--G.o.d alone knows what. I'll have an explanation from her before the night's out--and an apology. I should like to force her down upon her knees before everybody who heard her, the little----"

He left the sentence unfinished, even though he was only speaking to himself; as if he could not find words which would give adequate expression to his feelings. His partner asked him a question, he answered it; but even while he was speaking, as he steered her round the room, he was thinking of Violet Forster.

A little later Miss Forster was dancing with another of his brother officers, Mr. John Tickell, better known as Jackie. Mr. Tickell was not only still a subaltern, he was a junior subaltern; it was his habit to mention the fact, with an air of grievance, to persons of the feminine s.e.x, after a very brief acquaintance, if they showed signs of being sympathetic. As he was quite a nice boy, and not bad-looking, as he would himself have expressed it, when he "struck" a girl, nine times out of ten, he found her as sympathetic as he could possibly have desired. He had made Miss Forster's acquaintance for the first time that night; had booked a dance with her with the brightest hopes, which were destined to be blighted. There was no mistake about her dancing, their steps went perfectly together; it was in other directions that disappointment came. He led her, when the music ceased, to a spot on which he had had his mind's eye all along. In the pa.s.sage outside the ballroom there was an alcove, quite a small one; it was screened by a palm in a wooden tub, a sensible-sized palm, with plenty of leaves, which really did do service as a screen. Behind this palm there were chairs, two chairs; no more. Any two persons who sat on them would be in the midst of the crowd; there was a perpetual procession up and down the corridor; and yet as much alone as the most sensitive young man who was in need of sympathy could possibly desire. Mr. Tickell made straight for that alcove, rather hurrying the lady.

"I know a first-rate place for sitting out, if only someone isn't there before us."

No one was; they placed themselves in the two chairs. Mr. Tickell gave a little sigh of satisfaction; the young woman beside him was distinctly a find--as he would himself have phrased it, "a ripping dancer, awfully well turned out, and a dazzler to look at." He had no doubt that he was in for an extremely good time, and therein showed that the prophetic eye was certainly not his, because he had been there only a very few minutes before he began very ardently to wish that that alcove had been occupied by a dozen, or even twenty, people, instead of being left invitingly open for him.

"Are you fond of dancing?"

He also had his methods of commencing such conversations; this was one of his stereotyped openings; he liked to lead up to the sympathetic point by routes with which he was acquainted.

"Don't I dance as if I were--is that what you mean?"

This was not at all the sort of answer he had expected; from his point of view, it was not playing the game. While he was still floundering about for a suitable answer, she put a question to him on her own account.

"What are you fond of?"

He would have liked to say that he was fond of her. He had had partners to whom he would have said it without the slightest hesitation; but somehow he felt that this was a partner with whom the remark might not have the success it deserved; and before he spoke she again went on.

"Are you fond of gambling?"

"Gambling?" He stared at her with startled eyes, it seemed to him to be such a singular question to have hurled at him.

"I mean, for instance, are you fond of poker?" Again she went on before he could speak, taking an answer for granted in a fashion which he found a trifle disconcerting. "But, of course, I know you are; I have heard of some of your performances at poker."

He really did not like her tone at all; there was something in it which made him conscious of a vague discomfort. What could the girl be driving at?

"Particularly I've heard of one."

She said it while she was glancing at him over the top of her fan, which she was opening and shutting.

"Which one?"

"Weren't you playing some months ago when one of your brother officers was accused of cheating?"

Small wonder if his eyes seemed to grow rounder, the bad taste of such a remark! To say nothing of its unexpectedness.

"Really, I don't know to what you refer."

"Oh yes, you do. You know perfectly well; if you don't, I'll explain."

"Thank you very much, but if you don't mind, I'll take you back to the ballroom; there's someone whom I've just thought I ought to be behaving nicely to."

"You'll behave as nicely as you can to me before you try your practised hand on anybody else. You've presence of mind, Mr. Tickell, but it won't do. You sit still until I let you go."

Except by violence, he could hardly have got away; he saw now why she had expressly directed him to take the farther chair. He could scarcely get out of the alcove without pa.s.sing her; he did not see how he could do it if she did not choose to let him.

"At the game of poker to which I wish to call your attention, right at the close, you were betting against Mr. Sydney Beaton."

"If you don't mind, I'd much rather not talk about it; I don't know how you came to know anything about it, but you'll understand that it's rather a painful subject to me. What do you think of the floor--first-rate, isn't it?"

If he hoped to get her to confine her conversation to what he regarded as proper topics, his hope was doomed to disappointment, as she at once made plain.

"There was a good bit of money in the pool, at the point on which I wish to refresh your memory--over a thousand pounds, I've been given to understand, at the moment when Mr. Beaton covered your raise--you had a straight, king high; Mr. Beaton had a full, three aces and a pair of knaves, a much better hand than yours, and yet, I'm told, you claimed the pool."

"Then you've been misinformed. Excuse me, Miss Forster, I don't know what all this has to do with you."

"It has a very great deal to do with me. You claimed the pool----"

"I did not claim the pool; really, Miss Forster, I don't think this is the sort of thing to talk about at a dance."

"You took the pool, you conveyed its contents to your pockets."

"It was adjudged to be mine. But with all possible apologies, Miss Forster, I must decline to discuss the subject with you, especially at such a moment as this. May I take you back to the ballroom?"

He stood up, his face a little flushed; if he thought that she would be overawed by his air of determination, he was mistaken. She also stood up, in such a way that without an actual tussle it would have been impossible for him to escape--that well-screened alcove had its drawbacks.

"You will not leave me, Mr. Tickell, till you have given me certain explanations which I am about to require from you. Sit down."

Nothing could have been more dictatorial than her manner, or more uncalled for; his visage sufficiently expressed the amazement he felt.

"Miss Forster!"

"You have done me a very serious injury, Mr. Tickell, a wrong which no man with any pretensions to decency would do any woman; if you decline to sit down, if you try to leave this place, there'll be a scandal, because I shall follow you into the ballroom, and wring an explanation from you there. I am not friendless; I will take care that you don't leave this house till I have it."

The young gentleman sat down, with every appearance of the most extreme discomfiture. His words came from stammering lips.

"I--I--I never heard such a thing in my life; I--I've done you a wrong?

Why, Miss Forster, I never met you before. Of course, I've heard of you, everybody has; as--as to doing you a wrong, I'd no more think of doing you a wrong than--than---- Whatever makes you think I have?"

She resumed her seat beside him with an air that was much more commanding than he had ever seen worn by his colonel.

"Be so good as to answer the question which I put to you just now, Mr.

Tickell: why did you convey to your own pockets the contents of the pool which properly belonged to Mr. Beaton, since he had won it?"

"I do not know why you are talking to me like this, Miss Forster--I give you my word I don't--but if you know so much you must know the chaps said he cheated."

"What chaps?"

"All the chaps."

"Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Tickell, on your honour, that all the men who were present in the room accused Mr. Beaton of cheating?"