There was a dance at Brineweald that evening, and everybody who was anybody in the neighbourhood had been invited. The Vicar's family, the doctor's children, the Swynnertons from Barbacan, the Blights from the Castle, and one or two people from Folkestone, were among the guests, while a band had been ordered down from Ashbury for the occasion.

Lord Henry was entirely satisfied with the arrangement. It was calculated to keep the two Brineweald households under his eye the whole evening, and to prevent those wanderings which, while they complicated his task, also made it difficult for him to follow developments.

To Denis Malster, on the other hand, the dance was a most unwelcome disturbance. Fearing from the turn events had taken that day that he had not gone far enough with Leonetta in order to be able to rely absolutely on her single-minded attachment, he foresaw that the dance that evening would offer few opportunities, if any, of repairing his omission, and he was accordingly not in the best of moods to enjoy it.

As the sufferer from some fatal disease is the last to be convinced that his condition is hopeless, so the ardent lover, for whom things are going none too smoothly, is the last to be persuaded that he is really losing ground.

He will ascribe his rebuffs to a passing whim on the part of his beloved, to a momentary lapse in her customary humour, to her food, to a desire on her part to test him, to transitory evil influences from outside, to the thermometer, the barometer, the moon!—in fact to anything, except to the possibility that she could actually have cooled towards him; and the more overpowering his arrogance happens to be, the more complex and subtle will be the explanations which his imagination will furnish for the unpleasant change in his affairs.

That Denis was beginning to feel a deadly hatred for Lord Henry scarcely requires to be stated. In fact, this feeling in him was so irrepressible, so rapacious, that it grasped even at morsels of nourishment it could not obtain, in the desire to strengthen itself. Thus he had actually come to believe that Lord Henry was a charlatan; he was prepared to prove that he had immoral intentions against every girl in his immediate neighbourhood, and he was completely satisfied that, like Mrs. Delarayne, Lord Henry was decades older than he admitted.

Meanwhile, however, a thousand petty but significant trifles showed Denis that he no longer exercised that power over Leonetta, and could no longer claim that whole-hearted devotion from her, which had marked their relationship only a day or two previously. The girl no longer gave him her entire attention, neither did she appear to tax her brain to the same extent as theretofore in order to engross his every thought. From a solid union which defied all interference, and which therefore made all interested spectators feel uneasy, their relationship had relaxed into a harmless and hearty friendship. But it was Leonetta who was shaking herself loose, and the more tightly Denis clung to the strands of their former intimacy, the more tenuous these seemed to become,—just as if his hold on them were more frantic than their strength could bear.

These signs were naturally not lost on Cleopatra. On the contrary, she registered them every one with the accuracy of a trained observer. And as surely as the cumulative evidence of all she saw began to point with ever greater precision in the direction of her sister's fickleness and mutability, the more her health improved, and the more cheerful she became. It is remarkable how the state of being overanxious spoils a creature's humour and mars the brightest sally. A week previously Cleopatra could say nothing, however bright, that did not fall flat, even beside a less brilliant outburst of her sister's.

Now, with her increasing serenity, with her restored sleep, and with her mind at rest about the issue, she recovered her lost spirits; her voice once more began to be heard at table as often as Leonetta's, and the traditional savour of Delarayne humour was maintained as faithfully by the elder as by the younger of the two daughters.

Lord Henry watched this improvement in his patient with lively interest and amusement, but he quite well realised, notwithstanding, that the means he had used had been exceptional, and could scarcely have been recommended as practicable therapeutics to every practising physician in England. Nevertheless, he felt that he had not yet completely discharged his duty to Mrs. Delarayne, whom he loved sufficiently to serve with zeal; and as he walked down to Sir Joseph's ballroom that evening he was half aware that only the first stage in his campaign had been successfully fought.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Tribes, Leonetta and her sister, he had made many friends at Brineweald. Stephen and his sister were devoted to him,—so in his way was Guy Tyrrell; while it was only Sir Joseph's constant dread of the young nobleman's mysterious power over Mrs. Delarayne that prevented him, too, from becoming one of Lord Henry's devoted adherents.

The dance was a great success. With scrupulous care Lord Henry divided his attentions equally between Mrs. Delarayne and her two daughters, and thus broke into Denis Malster's programme with Leonetta with devastating effect. This young man was bound to dance a few dances with Mrs. Delarayne and her elder daughter; he was also obliged, out of regard for Sir Joseph, to attend to some of the baronet's guests; and thus, when it came to his turn to claim Leonetta, he was scarcely in a mood to be fascinating.

"What's the matter with you?" he whispered angrily to her, as they swept up the ballroom.

"Nothing—what do you mean?" she rejoined.

"You're not the same. Have I done anything to upset you?"

"No——"

"Well, tell me, Leo,—tell me what it is! You have been hateful to me the whole day."

"My dear boy, I haven't. What have I done? I'm just the same, if you are."

"Just the same?" Denis snorted. "Why, look how you treated me on the terrace!"

"Oh, that!"

"Yes,—besides, yesterday evening you said that you would tell me to-day whether you were prepared to do what I suggested. We might have been well away by now."

Leonetta, who was enjoying the dance far too much to regret not being "well away by now," tried to appear absent-minded.

"I didn't say to-day—did I?" she observed.

"Oh, well, if you don't remember."

"I may have done."

"Oh, Leo, you don't really love me. You say you do, but you don't."

Nothing on earth is more wearying than an injured and protesting lover. Better never to have been loved at all than to suffer such persecution.

"My dear boy, what do you want me to do?" she sighed.

"Be as you were three days ago—before——"

"Before what?"

"Before that man came down," Denis ejaculated with the hoarseness of rage.

She smiled, and there was a suggestion of triumph in the glint of her large canines.

"He's cured Cleo, any way," she said.

"A nice cure! The heat becomes too intense for somebody, a quack is called down, the weather cools, as it did twenty-four hours afterwards, and the quack gets the credit."

In another part of the ballroom Lord Henry and Cleopatra were trying to entertain one another, and both of them were perspiring freely from the efforts they were making.

"I think I have at last succeeded in prevailing upon the Tribes to join me on my trip to China," said Lord Henry, hoping that this subject might supply more conversation than the previous one had done.

"What will they do?"

"I must have someone, some man who is conscientious, retiring, and willing to help me and follow my directions without pushing himself forward. And Tribe is exactly the sort,—unassuming, conscientious, and meek."

"But what will become of the Inner Light?"

"I hope I shall have dealt that nonsense the severest blow it has ever received," Lord Henry exclaimed. "At any rate, Mrs. Tribe has done half the fighting for me. She is most anxious to come. Tribe is simply one of those people who have an itch to be doing some 'good work.' Give him the Inner Light or my business in China, he's just as happy. Stephen may come too."

Cleopatra purred, and looked down at her toe.

"This is a beautiful floor, isn't it?" said Lord Henry at last, when he found that the topic of the Tribes also fell completely flat.

"Quite as good as the best in town," Cleopatra replied, her lips quivering slightly. "Sir Joseph had it specially built when he bought the place."

"The band is quite good, too, for a provincial,—for a provincial sort of band," Lord Henry added.

Her eyes were still downcast. "Yes, we haven't had these before. Sir Joseph usually gets a band from Folkestone."

Meanwhile Mrs. Delarayne and Sir Joseph, who together had opened the dance, were having a somewhat acrimonious discussion.

"My dear Edith, I'll speak to him if you wish me to," reiterated the baronet for the third time, "but I think it is a little premature."

"I tell you, Joseph, that if you don't speak to him to-morrow, for certain, and ask him what his intentions are towards Leonetta, I shall pack up the girls' and my own traps, and off we'll go."

This brought Sir Joseph to his senses. "Shall we both do it?" he suggested unctuously.

"Very well, if you prefer it. You see I can't ask Lord Henry to speak to him, otherwise I would."

Sir Joseph almost lost his temper. "Lord Henry, Lord Henry!—my dear Edith, of course not! What 'as it got to do with Lord 'Enry?"

"No, that's what I say; that's why I ask you."

"All right, you and I will have him in the study to-morrow, and we'll ask Leonetta up too, and get the whole thing settled."

"But mind!" said the widow gravely, "I am not at all in favour of it."

When at one a.m. on the following morning, "The Fastness" party had been driven home, Leonetta and Vanessa, much too excited to go to bed, lingered interminably over their undressing, and sat talking until nearly daybreak.

Vanessa was feeling very happy on the whole, because she had had more dances with Denis than she had expected. She was therefore quite prepared to be indulgent towards her school-friend, and to exchange notes without bitterness.

"You had a lovely time with Lord Henry, didn't you?" she said. "You are a flirt, Leo!"

"My dear, it was simply heavenly."

"And wasn't Denis wild!" Vanessa exclaimed, hoping to widen the breach between these two.

"Was he?"

"He was wild enough this afternoon, but when he saw you dancing so often with Lord Henry—well!——"

"What did he say this afternoon,—do tell me!"

"He said you were too young to be always talking all sorts of deep things with a man of forty."

Leonetta laughed. "Well, I like that!" she cried. "I wasn't too young last night, was I?"

"Why, what happened last night?" Vanessa enquired, without revealing a trace of envy in her inscrutable Jewish eyes.

"Oh, well, never mind. I suppose I ought to say the night before last. But, anyhow, Lord Henry is not forty. I asked him. He's only thirty-three."

"Well, I'm only repeating what Denis said," Vanessa observed.

"I know one thing, Lord Henry's jolly clever. Do you know what it is to feel your skin creep all over while anybody's talking to you even about simple subjects?"

"Yes—rather!"

"Well, that's what Lord Henry makes me feel. And what's more, he has a ripping way of putting things scientifically to you. He never flatters you. He proves to you on scientific principles that you are one of the best,—do you understand?"

Vanessa was delighted, and, strange as it may seem, so was Leonetta; an unusual coincidence of sentiment in these two flappers—for Vanessa had not long ceased from being a flapper—which foreboded no good to any one.

The following day broke dull and wet for the inhabitants of Brineweald, and for the first hour of the morning the rain was sufficiently heavy to keep the two households apart.

Lord Henry was therefore thrown on the company of Sir Joseph's party, and he entertained them, or perhaps disturbed them, as they digested their breakfast, by discussing various aspects of English matrimonial arrangements. He had ruminated overnight the principle that Mrs. Delarayne had laid down in regard to Leonetta,—"that she was much too good for Denis Malster,"—and he was beginning to see that it was entirely justified.

"It is a pity," he declared, addressing Miss Mallowcoid, "that it is almost impossible in this country to arrange matches. I don't see why you can't, but you can't."

Denis Malster, Guy, and the Tribes dropped their newspapers, and Sir Joseph doing likewise, regarded the young nobleman with a perplexed frown.

"Think of the terrible responsibility!" exclaimed Miss Mallowcoid.

"Yes, but that should not deter us,—surely!" Lord Henry rejoined. "Everything relating to parenthood is responsibility, why shirk that last duty of all?"

"But they wouldn't let us," Miss Mallowcoid objected.

"Because they don't trust you," Lord Henry replied. "That must be the reason. They have learned not to trust the mature adult. British parents are either too indolent, or too incompetent to do the thing properly. And the consequence is young people have been trained by tradition to believe that, in the matter of choosing their mates, concerning which they know literally nothing, and are taught less, they must be left to their own silly romantic devices."

"But look at the results!" said Miss Mallowcoid. "Surely the arrangement works."

"Does it? That's precisely what I question," Lord Henry cried.

"You don't mean to say, do you," Denis Malster enquired, "that you would accept a wife chosen for you by your parents?"

"If they were equipped with the necessary knowledge and insight, most certainly," Lord Henry retorted.

"So it comes to this," said Mrs. Tribe, "that our matrimonial system in this country is based upon our parents' lack of the necessary knowledge and insight."

"Precisely!" Lord Henry exclaimed. "Otherwise they would shoulder the responsibility cheerfully."

"Nonsense!" snapped Miss Mallowcoid.

"I agree with you," added Denis, turning a smiling face to the old spinster.

"Why, it's our idea of liberty,—that's what it is!" Miss Mallowcoid averred.

"Yes; the liberty to do and think the wrong thing nine times out of ten," was Lord Henry's comment.

Denis Malster rose and went to the window. "Well, I should like the weather to clear," he said, "so that we could set about doing something a little more interesting than this."

Miss Mallowcoid and Sir Joseph laughed. The open hostility that was growing between Lord Henry and the baronet's secretary enabled them to get many a thrust at the former without so much as grazing their knuckles.

Lord Henry chuckled. "It is curious," he said quietly, "how doing something, nowadays, is always assumed to be more interesting than thinking something."

"But you used to be so fond of arguing, Mr. Malster," Mrs. Tribe suggested with a malicious smile.

Denis grew hot about the ears, and the Incandescent Gerald, who had a forgiving heart, frowned reprovingly at his wife.

"Yes, but one gets frightfully sick of hearing one's country and its institutions constantly run down," said Denis, casting a malevolent glance at Lord Henry. "My country, right or wrong, is what I say."

"Hear, hear!" cried Miss Mallowcoid. "That's very true."

"Yes, and very immoral," Lord Henry murmured. "It is the motto of decadence. It means that the moment the Union Jack is unfurled, the voice of criticism, the intellect, and the first principles of justice and honest self-analysis, must be stifled."

"Hullo! there's a streak of blue in the sky, and there's 'The Fastness' en bloc!" cried Denis, very much relieved at the sight of his master's car bearing all Mrs. Delarayne's household.

Everybody went on to the terrace to meet them, and one by one, the ladies, with Stephen in the rear, came up the steps in their mackintoshes.

Lord Henry noticed how amply Leonetta's frame filled her smart rain-coat, and yet how sylph-like she appeared by the side of the rather more heavy Jewess.

"Let's go for a walk!" she cried, as she greeted the men.

"Yes!" sang Cleopatra, Vanessa, Stephen, and Guy in chorus.

Denis, wishing the invitation had not been so general, endeavoured to get Leonetta to speak to him for a moment alone, but she sedulously thwarted his manoeuvres.

"I'm dead!" exclaimed Mrs. Delarayne. "The dance was too much for me. If anybody killed me now they couldn't justly be charged with taking human life. Don't ask me to stir till lunch."

The younger people, including the Tribes, therefore agreed to defy the weather and to walk to Sandlewood and back before luncheon, and, in a few minutes the whole party was ready: Lord Henry with Cleopatra, Agatha and Stephen in the van, Leonetta and Vanessa with Denis and Mr. Tribe next, and Mrs. Tribe and Guy Tyrrell in the rear.

Nothing of very great interest happened on the walk to Sandlewood, and common subjects of conversation sped backwards and forwards in snatches, from the front to the rear of the party, interrupted only by laughter and occasional barely audible comments, which were intended for the benefit of only one section.

As usual Cleopatra and Lord Henry found it extremely difficult to rise above the barest platitudes in their talk to each other, and Agatha was astonished at the emptiness of their conversation. It was partly owing to this fact that Lord Henry would occasionally start a subject, like a wave, rolling back over the heads of those behind him, so that the acute embarrassment that he and Cleopatra felt in each other's presence might be slightly relieved by the unconscious participation of the others in their tÊte-Á-tÊte.

Cleopatra was perfectly well now, and appeared supremely happy. But she still kept her eyes on the ground, and responded almost with nervous agitation to Lord Henry's remarks. It was as if she felt their perfunctory nature, their conspicuous jejuneness, and nevertheless, like him, was utterly unable to broach the discussion of more serious things.

Stephen, too, was a little disappointed with his hero, and wondered what could have come over him, that he should suddenly have grown as commonplace as Sir Joseph himself. He constantly looked back with curious longing, as the laughter from behind became more persistent, and it was only hope still undefeated that made him cling to Lord Henry's side.

When a man on a walk calls the attention of his companions to the condition of the hedges; when he notices that the road wants mending, or that the ditches are either clean or overgrown; when, moreover, he comments on the early discolouration of the leaves of certain distant trees, it can clearly be due only to one of two causes: either his conversation never rises above the level of such subjects, or else, some influence is active which has so severely shaken his composure as to leave him utterly destitute of thought.

If women divine, even half-consciously, that the latter is the reason, they are, however, patient and tolerant, where his temporary stupidity is concerned. But Stephen was not a woman, neither was Agatha half-consciously aware of the true cause of Lord Henry's transient dullness.

On the way home there was a general shuffling of the members of the party, and to Lord Henry's relief, Leonetta, Mrs. Tribe, and Guy Tyrrell sprang eagerly to his side, while Agatha, Cleopatra, and Stephen joined Denis, Vanessa, and the Incandescent Gerald in front.

Cleopatra's persistent and yet unaffected affability to Denis had now become one of the added terrors of Brineweald to this unfortunate young man, and what struck him as particularly strange was that the more animated and hilarious became the conversation behind, between Lord Henry and Leonetta, the more perfectly natural and cheerful did Cleopatra appear to grow. He had done his utmost to convey to Leonetta on the walk out that he insisted on her returning with him at her side. He hoped that the girl had seen what he himself thought he perceived—that is to say, a growing intimacy between Lord Henry and her sister,—and that this would induce her to do as he desired. Leonetta, however, was at times unaccountably dense. She had escaped from him at Sandlewood, and, to his utter bewilderment, the sound of her voice now, in animated converse with Lord Henry, seemed to leave Cleopatra entirely unperturbed.

Had Cleopatra hopes?

Truth to tell, Cleopatra had more than hopes; she was partially convinced that these were confirmed. She could be affable to Denis, she could be kind to Leonetta,—aye, she could even have embraced her worst tormentor now, and with sincere friendship, because she was supremely and profoundly happy. Even if Lord Henry did not feel anything for her,—and his extraordinary behaviour rather invalidated that alternative,—she had at least encountered a man who rose to the standard of her girlhood's ideal, who made her feel that hitherto she had not been wrong in experiencing a faint feeling of dissatisfaction about the other men she had met, and who therefore consoled her for having waited. And, with this conviction in her heart, she was able at once to classify Denis Malster among the "impossibles." She saw now how much more her recent trouble had been the outcome of wounded vanity, than of thwarted passion, and she was able to treat her former admirer with a lavish good humour and friendliness that completely froze him.

She too caught snatches of the conversation behind. She heard how animated and hilarious it was. And, comparing it with Lord Henry's attitude not thirty minutes previously, she felt convinced that it was she this time, and not her sister, who had conquered. As she came to this conclusion, a strange thrill, utterly new and inexperienced theretofore, pervaded her whole body, until the titillation of her nerves became almost painful, and a fierce longing for the bewildering personality at her back suddenly possessed her as a conscious and uncontrollable desire.

When they were half-way out of the wood Leonetta suddenly announced that she had dropped a bangle. She and Lord Henry had been losing ground for some time, and having separated themselves from Mrs. Tribe and Guy Tyrrell, had fallen much to the rear.

"Are you sure you had it with you?"

"Absolutely certain," she exclaimed.

"Let's go back then," said Lord Henry.

They turned and began to retrace their steps along the path that led back to Sandlewood village, keeping their eyes on the ground as they went.

Suddenly a cry from Guy made them stop.

"What are you two up to?" he shouted. "You'll be late for lunch."

"All right, you go back and tell them to start without us!" cried Lord Henry. "Leonetta's lost her bangle."

Guy nodded, and continued on his way homeward with Mrs. Tribe.

"That's a nice thing!" Lord Henry observed.

"Of course, they'll think I've done it on purpose!" Leonetta rejoined, smiling roguishly.

Lord Henry smiled too. She certainly seemed to understand that her character was not incompatible with such a conclusion.

They walked on thus for about five minutes, and then suddenly Lord Henry espied the ornament lying in the mud.

"Oh, I'm so thankful to you, Lord Henry,—you've no idea!" she cried. "I should never have found it myself."

Lord Henry was facing the homeward path, and she had her back turned to it. With great care he removed the offending particles of mud from the recovered treasure, and then fastened it on her arm. At the same moment, at a bow-shot from him, he saw Denis approaching at a rapid pace through the wood. Evidently he was coming in the hope of finding the bangle, and behind him followed Vanessa and the Incandescent Gerald.

It seemed as if Fate itself had been active here, and had laid this unique opportunity in Lord Henry's hands. It was certainly too good to lose, and feeling perfectly certain that Denis could not know that his approach had been perceived, resolved immediately upon a drastic, but as he thought, conclusive measure.

It was unfortunate that the Incandescent Gerald, whose sole object in coming was probably his besetting desire to "do good work," as Lord Henry put it, was also in sight. But there are certain risks that a good strategist must run.

"Oh, you don't know how thankful I am!" Leonetta cried again.

Lord Henry smiled. There was no time to lose. "I think that almost deserves a kiss," he said, placing an arm round her waist.

She looked up; her expression spelt consent, and he held her for some seconds in his arms.

"Well!" she cried, releasing herself; "it seems to me I go from bad to worse."

He looked in the direction of home, and, as he feared, Vanessa, Denis, and the Incandescent Gerald had turned their backs, and were racing as hard as they could towards Brineweald Park.