"The Princess Juanita dawned upon respectability like Aphrodite rising from the gutters."

According to Mrs. Shelley, as quoted by Eric to George Oakleigh and the author, this was the opening sentence of Valentine Arden's "New Jerusalem," and she had given a luncheon party on the strength of it. Since her husband's death, Eric had edged gently away from her self-conscious artistic menagerie; he had been recaptured for a moment after the Coronation, when his father was knighted for "eminent services to the study of Anglo-Saxon" and he could himself be introduced as "the son of Sir Francis Lane, you know"; and it was no sooner hinted that a play of his had been accepted by Harry Manders than she dragged him back into his cage with a tacit order to stay there until his public interest was exhausted.

It was Mrs. Shelley's practice to read every book of importance on the day of publication; it was her ambition to know all about it before it was written. The new satire, she informed her guests, had engaged Arden's energies for two years and presented a picture of London society under the empire of Sir Adolf Erckmann and the cosmopolitans; the forces of respectability had not escaped the impartial lash of his ridicule, and almost every character was a portrait. Mrs. Welman waltzed unmistakably over the glittering pages with Sir Deryk Lancing; Lord Pennington, Jack Summertown and the Baroness Kohnstadt flitted from place to place like the chorus of a musical comedy, and every scandal of the last ten years was described or mentioned. If the book were ever published, Mrs. Shelley was convinced that the heavens would rain writs for libel; certainly no one would continue to know the author. She had reasoned with him, but he was apparently tired of London and contemplated impressing his personality on New York.

While no one was secure, Eric gathered that the greatest speculation surrounded the identity of "Princess Juanita." Mrs. Shelley maintained that the character must be intended for Sonia Dainton, who had joined the Erckmann faction when she broke off her engagement with Loring; Lady Maitland, who was still smarting in the belief that Arden had sketched her for his earlier "Madame Chasseresse-de-Lions," had no doubt that he was now squirting his poison at Lady Barbara Neave. "A man like that," she told Mrs. Shelley, "would never waste time on a commoner like Sonia Dainton when he could besmirch the daughter of a marquess and tickle his wretched provincial audience by calling her a princess." Her bitter words were repeated to the author, who announced that he was giving his book the sub-title "Commoner and Commoner," and dedicating it to Lady Maitland. Only when he was tired of his friends' good advice did he admit that the satire existed but in his imagination.

"One is taken altogether too literally," he complained to his friends in the smoking-room of the Thespian Club. "A grim, cultured hostess, spectacled young poets having their own poems explained to them by Lady Poynter, a dinner which one ate and tried to forget, furtive confidences on the wine from Lord Poynter, a succession of longueurs—you see the scene? Chelsea.... Earnestness.... Ill-assortment.... Without any wish to Épater le bourgeois, one played with an idea, developed it, invented characters, let fall a phrase.... Perhaps one has allowed good Sir Adolf to obsess one's mind.... It was not a remarkable phrase; but one could hardly have caused a greater stir if one had telegraphed anonymously to one's friends—"Fly. All is known." Lady Knightrider almost offered one a blank cheque to stop publication. A jeu d'esprit must be labelled before it is offered to the English."

"Well, I'm glad the book's not going to be published," said Oakleigh. "That little gang's had quite enough advertisement without any help from you."

"One hates to disappoint Lady Barbara," answered Arden reflectively. "Undeniably she compels a reluctant admiration. She has lived in three continents—in regal state; she has met every one and done everything; in her leisure she has written plays, selected poetry, exhibited caricatures—not altogether contemptible—of her family and friends, patronized new schools of decoration, invented new fashions of dress and, as all the world knows, worn them. What remained? One met her first some years ago and asked oneself that question. It is still unanswered!"

"At present she's bolstering up two or three dozen people who are only received on the strength of her name," Oakleigh replied. "And she's going to find that her name isn't strong enough to carry them."

"These people go to her head," Arden replied with disgust. "One credited her with more detachment."

The campaign of rehabilitation had not been an unqualified success. Lady Knightrider aimed at reconciling Barbara with her relations rather than at reconciling her relations with her friends. There was an implied threat that she must choose one or the other; and a prevalent feeling was crystallized by Jack Waring, when he said that she was not worth knowing at the price of having to know her disorderly retinue. While she welcomed the concordat, Lady Barbara could not explain to Sir Adolf Erckmann that he was her fit companion one day and unfit the next; she might gently repel a cosmopolitan here and there, but she could not refuse all their invitations always; loyalty imposed its obligations, and stronger than loyalty was an impatient desire to tell other people to mind their own business. Yet the concordat might have endured, if the discussion of Arden's hypothetical book had not impelled Lady Knightrider hot-foot from Mrs. Shelley's house to his rooms at the Ritz. Not content with her legitimate relief at finding that "Princess Juanita" was no less a myth than "The New Jerusalem," she confided to Arden that dear Barbara did go about with "really rather dreadful people"; some one at her party had said that the girl's friends were such that he preferred not to know her. So long as she associated with them, it was only too probable that there would be another unpleasantness of some kind.

"I really think it my duty," she said on leaving, "to drop a little hint to my sister."

The nods and winks of verbal warning are apt to take on an exaggerated significance when defined in black and white. On receipt of the letter Lord Crawleigh motored to London and opened a new commission of enquiry to investigate the personal desirability of his daughter's associates. If Lady Barbara was at first bewildered, she was in no way daunted, for in the endless intermingling of groups throughout London she could usually find a sponsor for the most draggled of her friends. Sir Adolf Erckmann's private life might lead him into the Divorce Court, he might even be the "vulgar, common fellow" that her father described, but he had dined in Berkeley Square as a member of Lord Crawleigh's Departmental Committee on Indian Currency Reform. Lady Crawleigh always went to the vulgar, common fellow's famous musical parties in Westbourne Terrace. Lady Barbara had originally met Mrs. Welman at a performance of "The School for Scandal," organized by Lady Maitland for charity, and had naturally accepted the implied guarantee; it was not against civil, canon or moral law for a woman to have been on the stage. Those who, like Webster, could not so easily be defended were pushed into the background. The battle of wits ceased to be amusing when Lord Crawleigh repeated his threat that Barbara would not be allowed to go anywhere unless she were suitably chaperoned. The dreary banishment at the Abbey lingered in her memory as a summer stolen out of her life. As her patience ebbed, she decided that there must be an end of these inquisitions.

It was easy to trace her present plight through Lady Knightrider to Val Arden; but there was some one behind Arden, for her father claimed to have chapter and verse for saying that people were refusing to know her so long as she associated with her present friends. With a shock of surprise she recalled a self-satisfied young man who had in fact met her invitation to be introduced with a drawling, "Thanks very much. She may be all you say, but...."

It was incredible that one bumptious boy could do so much harm.... Even when the commission adjourned without arriving at an agreed report, Lady Barbara felt that a vendetta was being forced upon her....

She had no plan of campaign and knew nothing of her adversary but his name. Apart from Gerry Deganway she did not know of any one who was acquainted with him; and Deganway had done enough harm already without being given new opportunities. But, if the vendetta required resource, resource should be forthcoming. She called on Sonia Dainton the day after her father's inquisition and proposed that they should go for a drive. As the car entered the Park by Albert Gate, she pretended to recognize a face and said:

"Wasn't that Jack Waring?"

"I didn't see," Sonia answered.

"It was like him—though I don't know him to speak to."

"You'll find him very sticky. He's a great friend of your cousin Jim. When we were engaged, I used to see a certain amount of him. He's a heavy, Stone-Age creature; when he and Jim and George Oakleigh put their wise old heads together, there was nothing they wouldn't disapprove of!"

"I hear he's been good enough to criticize me," said Lady Barbara carelessly.

"When he doesn't even know you? What did he say?" asked Sonia.

"Oh, what does it matter? Some one started a story the other day that I took drugs. Li Webster heard a woman say, 'I was told by a friend who'd been to the same dressmaker; her arm was all red and pulpy; I believe she's been doing it for years and that's why she always wears long sleeves at night.' Have you ever seen me in long sleeves, Sonia. I've got much too good arms! And, if I wanted to take the beastly stuff, shouldn't I have it injected where it wouldn't shew? I did want to meet that woman—just to tell her to use her brains. And, if I ever meet your friend Mr. Waring——"

"My dear, he's not my friend! I was asked down to Croxton for the hunt ball at the end of this month; I made Bobby Pentyre tell me who was going to be there and, when I saw Jack Waring's name, I said 'nothin' doin'.' I know those hunt balls! Vermilion men in pink coats.... Jack will be just in his element; he'll support a wall and tell everybody that he doesn't know any of 'these modern dances,' as though it were something to be proud of."

Lady Barbara laughed mechanically and sorted the new information into its appropriate pigeon-hole. She was dining and going to a play that night with Summertown and his sister; Sally Farwell's passion for Pentyre had become a habit, and, if he did not reciprocate her passion, he could hardly refuse her friend an invitation for the ball. Once within the same house as Jack Waring, she had decided nothing save that he could not be allowed to walk through the world with his nose in the air, saying that she or her friends were "bad style."

A week later she arrived at Croxton Hall and explored the terrain for the engagement. Waring, she learned, came once a year into Buckinghamshire from old habit, because he had hunted with the Croxton from Oxford; he was returning to chambers by the breakfast-car train next day. She had few hours for making her effect; and they were further reduced when Jack drove up three-quarters of an hour late to find that the house-party was already dressed and busily adjusting its relationships. Lady Pentyre scrambled through half a dozen introductions in as many seconds and hurried her guests into the dining-room, without giving him time to dress or even to see who was there; Barbara, standing a little behind the others, escaped notice; and, when she found herself seated by prearrangement at his side, she had to introduce herself.

"I believe you're a great friend of Jim's," she began. "He's a cousin of mine, and I've often heard him speak of you."

Jack was already disconcerted by having to dine unwashed and in a tweed suit; and his embarrassment increased as he guessed at her identity. For a while he would only talk disjointedly of Jim Loring, varying his conversation with apologies for his tweed suit; he had been kept late with a consultation, and, when he began to change in the train, two women got in at Bletchley. Barbara fastened on the consultation and with deft questions encouraged him to talk about his work. She had sat next to so many shy young men at official dinners that she could put any one at his ease. At her prompting and wholly unconscious of it, Jack discoursed of the bar in general and his own practice in particular for three-quarters of the dinner and was agreeably surprised to find her so intelligent a listener.

"I oughtn't to be here, really," he confided. "I haven't the time or energy for this kind of thing, but the Croxton's an old love of mine, I've not missed a Croxton ball since I was at Oxford." He was tempted to describe his first Croxton ball; but it was a long story, and he discovered that he had been monopolizing the conversation. "You're a great dancer, I expect?" he said with the indulgence of early middle age. "I look forward to watching you to-night."

Lady Barbara began to shake her head and then stopped with closed eyes and a bitten lip.

"I'm not going," she answered. "I've had such an awful headache all day."

"I'm so sorry! I don't dance myself, but I hoped you might spare me one or two for sitting out. If you're interested in law—the bar's by no means the dry-as-dust life some people think."

Talking to her was so easy that Jack had half determined to ask if he might have supper with her. Of the rest of the evening he could dispose comfortably enough by gossiping with old Gervaise, who had been in his father's regiment, and the other veterans of the hunt. Lady Pentyre never regarded him as a dancing man in making up her numbers. It would not be half so easy to find common ground with Sally Farwell or Grace Pentyre; without meaning to be unsympathetic, he felt that Lady Barbara might have chosen any other night of the year for her headache.

"It'll be better, when you get there," he prophesied encouragingly and wondered whether she would mistake his convenience for her own triumph. So far he had not looked at her, but he now stole a glance out of the corner of his eye and saw a straight, thin nose, haggard cheeks that had a pathetic fascination for him and a mouth which drooped wistfully; the lips were red, her eyes a velvet black, fringed with long black lashes and shaded with dark rings, changing colour and size like a cat's. The white, hollow cheeks combined with the dark eyes and red lips to suggest ravaging dissipation or ill-health; he would never be surprised to be told that she was consumptive. And he could not understand how any one so thin could be so attractive.

She caught him watching her and forced a smile.

"I've only been doing rather too much lately, I expect," she said.

"That I can well believe. But after dinner—I say, have you had anything to eat?"

"I had some melon.... But I'm not very hungry. If I don't go, don't tell Aunt Kathleen—Lady Knightrider, you know—will you? She gave me this dress specially and she'd be so awfully disappointed."

"Jolly dress," Jack answered, looking unanalytically at something which he could only remember afterwards as being generally black—with bits of silver here and there—and little transparent triangular pendants hanging down from shoulder to elbow. "I hope you'll be able to come."

"I shan't be able to dance," she sighed. "Every time I turn my head—Oo! I did it then! It's like a red-hot needle at the back of the eyes...." She picked up her gloves and held out a hand, as the butler announced that the cars were at the door. "I'll say good-night and good-bye. I hope you'll enjoy yourself. And I hope I've not been too unutterably boring."

Jack felt her hand pulling gently against his.

"When I'm trying to persuade you to come on with us?" he asked.

Lady Barbara shut her eyes in a second spasm of pain.

"Do you really want me to?"

"If you're up to it."

"I will, if you want me to," she promised.

For many years longer than Jack could remember, the Croxton Ball had taken place in the vast and half-derelict "King's Arms," once famous, with its long coffee-room and unlimited stabling, as the best posting-house in the county and the beginning of the last stage for coaches running from the east and northeast coast through Oxford to South Wales and the west. Once a year the dingy grey-stone hotel, filling one side of the market-place, blazed with unaccustomed light; and the barrack of stables behind awoke to welcome the procession of tightly-packed cars that explored their way with long white fingers down the broad, uneven village street.

Jack changed his clothes and joined a shivering group by the fire in the Commercial Room. Lady Barbara was sitting apart, sniffing a bottle of salts and gently repelling those who tried to engage her for a dance.

"She oughtn't to have come," murmured Lady Pentyre, who neither understood nor forgave her son for this eleventh-hour addition. After the disgraceful episode of the poker-party, she had vowed never to have the girl in her house again; and these later scandals were no recommendation to leniency. But, before she could hint at her objections, she was told that the invitation had already been issued. "If she's beginning a chill or anything——"

Jack crossed to the distant chair and was welcomed with a smile.

"How nice you look in that coat!" Lady Barbara cried. "Are those the Croxton buttons?"

"Yes.... May I sit and talk, if you didn't have too much of me at dinner? I feel responsible for bringing you here, you know."

"But I love doing what people ask me! It's my greatest self-indulgence. When are they going to begin, and what's all the fuss about in the hall?"

A babble of angry voices floated through the open door—criticism, suggestions and conflicting orders. The Secretary came in frowning and snatched at all members of the Committee within reach.

"I'll never go to those people again!" he thundered. "After all these years, too. Band hung up on the road. Wrong train. They won't be here for half an hour!"

A murmur of disappointment swelled through the room, eddying round the hall and rising from group to group on the stairs and in the ball-room.

Lady Barbara sat up alert, without any trace of headache or fatigue. The red lips were parted expectantly, with a gleam of small white teeth.

"I'll play!"

She darted from her chair, humming to herself and only pausing to crumple her scarf into a ball and to toss it with her gloves to Jack. He caught it mechanically, wonderingly. In a moment the grave-voiced girl with the tragic eyes and hint of consumption had transformed herself into something untamed, with shining eyes and irresponsible restlessness. He listened to her voice growing fainter on the stairs, then looked with some embarrassment at the crumpled scarf and gloves.

The strict waltz rhythm was slightly modified to give scope to the voice; but no one had began to dance when Jack went upstairs, and Lady Barbara had to break off and say:

"Do begin, some one!"

"We want to hear you sing," murmured a diffident voice.

"Rubbish! What d'you like? Ragtime? A waltz?"

Bobby Pentyre and Sally Farwell edged through the door; Summertown and his partner followed, and within two minutes the room was three-quarters full. Jack squeezed his way forward for a better view. Lady Barbara played tirelessly, modulating from waltz to waltz, humming a line here, whistling two bars there, until the Master panted up to the piano and cried "time." She laughed and sat back on the music-stool, softly fingering the keys and looking round the ball-room to see who was there. Jack stood self-consciously stranded by the door, assuring himself of the line of his tie, pulling down his waistcoat and glancing at the hang of his knee-breeches. Her eyes met his, and she smiled.

"Say when you want me to begin again," she called out.

"Give us just a moment," begged the Secretary.

She struck a chord and threw "Lord Rendel" at them with such tragic intensity that, at the end, Summertown raised a husky view-holloa of applause and the decorous group at the door clapped noiselessly. Jack always freely confessed that he knew nothing of music, but he felt bathed in delightful irresponsibility, as Lady Barbara mingled old English ballads with plantation songs and jolting ragtime with waltzes which seemed to draw his heart out of his body. She was gloriously free from self-consciousness. After two false starts, which were not lost on her, he crossed the room in the wake of a little party which went to beg for its favourite tunes.

"Awfully good of you to play like this," he said, as the others edged away. "I hope you're not making the headache worse?"

"I love making people happy." She stretched out her foot and pulled a chair beside her stool. "Tell me what you'd like me to play. D'you know "Deirdre of the Sorrows"? Not the play, but the waltz. Little O'Rane wrote it. You know him, I expect, he's a great friend of my cousin Jim." At the first chords of the waltz, couples from all round the room rose and began to dance. Jack threw one leg over the other and pushed his chair a short way back, faintly and belatedly embarrassed to find himself marooned on the dais by her side. "Mr. Waring——"

"Yes?"

"I want to ask you one question. You needn't answer it, unless you like.... And then we'll leave it alone. I'm not as bad as you expected?"

Though he had warned himself at the beginning of dinner to be untiringly on his guard, Jack looked up with a start. She was absorbed in the music; her head was bowed, and she only raised it to glance with half-closed eyes at the dancers, occasionally concentrating on one couple and regulating her time by theirs.

"You've answered your own question. Rather inadequately," he added.

"Thank you ... I wish you danced! You're missing such a lot!"

"Am I? Lady Barbara, why on earth did you ask me that?"

Her head drooped lower over the keys.

"Because it hurt so!" she whispered tremulously. "Am I so vulgar?"

"Do you imagine you're quoting me?"

"Oh, Mr. Waring, be honest! You despised me before you met me. Do you now?"

"It's the last thing I should dream of doing."

"Well, wasn't it rather unfair—before you even knew me? It's done me a lot of harm ... and it hurt so terribly. If you were just to say you were sorry——?"

Her humility was so unexpected as to be bewildering.

"My dear Lady Barbara, I've only seen you once before!" he exclaimed. "I did say something about you then; I criticized the people you went about with, if you're referring to that."

"Then you don't despise me?"

"You're the greatest revelation I've ever had."

As the waltz quickened to the coda, a stout, flamboyant figure appeared in the doorway, attended by a sallow escort armed with music-cases and instruments. The Secretary ended a warm exchange of invective to cross the room and thank Lady Barbara. Refusing to give an encore to the waltz, she bowed to Jack and hurried out of the room.

Half-way down the stairs he overtook her and asked to be allowed to sit out the next dance with her.

"We can hardly leave it like this, can we?" he urged.

"Like what? I must get some air! My head will burst, if I don't!"

She ran across the hall, rattled at the door-handle and hurried into the Market Square. The December night air lashed him like a jet of icy water and cut through his clothes; thirty yards ahead, Lady Barbara was running with arms outstretched and jumping from side to side over the grey-black puddles of dull, frozen water. A group of chauffeurs by the village pound removed their pipes and watched her; then replaced them; then removed them a second time as a second figure, in pink coat and knee-breeches, pounded along the echoing street. Once she glanced back on hearing the sound of footsteps; then ran on without changing her pace. They had overshot the last house and were facing an unhedged expanse of roots and crisp furrows before he overtook her.

"I say, what are you doing?" he panted, angry at being made conspicuous by her aimless freak.

Lady Barbara pressed a hand to her side, breathing quickly. Her hair had blown into disorder, her bosom was rising and falling; and once she kicked off a shoe to caress a bruised foot, balancing herself with her other hand on his shoulder.

"Impulse," she answered.

By moonlight her eyes were black; and, as she panted gently, her parted lips and rounded cheeks made a child of her. It was at least her third incarnation since eight o'clock, but Jack had lost strict count. As she squeezed the pebble out of her shoe, he noticed the provocative whiteness of her shoulders and the softness of her hair. His own pink coat and knee-breeches added the last touch to his discomfiture; and he knew that he could never equal her in creating the unconventional in order to master it.

"I was afraid your head might have made you faint," he murmured, consciously fatuous.

"It was only partly my head. Sometimes.... Did you see "Justice"? You remember the man in solitary confinement? He knew he mustn't pound on the door; he knew he'd be punished, if he did. He pounded all the same.... I've got too much vitality; I seem sometimes as if I'm in prison...." She shivered and gave a slight cough. "Is it very cold?"

"Not more than ten degrees of frost. I thought of bringing you a cloak, but I was afraid of losing you. If you don't come back at once, impulse will land you in double pneumonia."

She slipped her arm through his and began to walk, with a slight limp, back to the hotel.

"We had a gipsy in the family, though no one's ever allowed to mention her," she announced abruptly. "D'you call me pretty? I think you would, rather. Val Arden says I'm the 'haggard Venus.' Well, any looks we've got come from her."

"With a dash of temperament thrown in. Suppose we go a bit faster and then look for a fire? You're quite well enough to dance now."

"But I'd sooner talk to you. A girl told me the other day that you were—what was the word? 'sticky'; you never had anything to say, you were prim and old maidish——"

"I'm no good at ordinary social patter," he interrupted. "But you'd hardly apply that term to our conversation to-night."

They strode incongruously down the broad village street, past the group of expectant chauffeurs and into an ill-ventilated box described as the "reading-room." Both were emotionally out of breath, and the lights of the hotel made Jack self-conscious; he stole a sidelong glance at her and waited for the next change. Wistful appeal passed into effervescent irresponsibility; the self-possession of a woman of the world alternated with the radiant joyousness of a child.... And six months earlier she had left a German Jew's ornate carnival to drive with a sodden debauchee in a stolen car and had impaled an unknown chauffeur on the grey angle of a jutting wall in Hertfordshire. And there was the aeroplane accident; and the poker-party; and a dozen other things.... His glance held admiration as well as curiosity, and she smiled with glowing friendliness.

"Aren't you going to dance at all?" he asked.

"I didn't come here for that.... Now I'm going to pay you a compliment. I got myself invited because I heard you were coming; I wanted to give you a chance of judging me at first hand. There's an opportunity for returning the compliment, if you care to take it."

Jack looked at her with a surprise which he tried to veil, as he reminded himself again that he must be on his guard.

"I only hinted that your friends weren't good enough for you," he answered. "Knowing who you were and the positions your father had held——"

"Dear Jack, don't drag in father! Isn't that what I have to fight against? Having my personality submerged by his dead pomp and glory?"

Her use of his Christian name startled him; and she watched with amusement his stiff attempt not to seem startled.

"I'd sooner think of you as Lord Crawleigh's daughter than as Sir Adolf Erckmann's friend."

Her eyes half closed, and she looked at him through the long black lashes.

"I believe you're falling in love with me."

Jack lazily threw away the end of his cigarette, dusted imaginary specks of ash from his breeches and rose slowly to his feet.

"I was only thinking what I should feel about you, if you were my sister," he said. "Ought we to be going upstairs? Lady Pentyre's rather concerned about you."

"I'll reassure her," said Lady Barbara. "Don't bother to come up; you won't be dancing."

Though she had a reserve of self-control for scenic emergencies, he had snubbed her so wantonly that she darted like a black and silver moth out of the room before he could mark a change of expression. Jack followed in time to see her locate Lady Pentyre and take the chair by her side. The warm, scented air of the ball-room struck and flushed his cheeks like the heavy breath of a hot-house. Summertown, waltzing by, disengaged one hand and whistled shrilly on his fingers above the boom and wail of the band.

"Missing two, Babs?" he called out.

Lady Barbara pressed her hand against her eyes, then drew it away and shook her head.

"I'm not dancing to-night," she answered.

Lady Pentyre turned to her with mingled anxiety and impatience.

"Aren't you feeling any better?" she asked.

"I can't say that I am. When I stand, the floor goes up and down; and, when I sit down, the room goes gently round me."

Jack was leaning aimlessly against the door, and Lady Pentyre beckoned to him. She had no intention of leaving her son to make a fool of himself with Sally Farwell; and, if she told him or young Summertown to take Lady Barbara home, she would next hear that all three had fallen down a shaft in Durham.

"Mr. Waring, you're not dancing! Do you think you could find one of the cars and take this child back to bed? I hardly like to send her alone, you know, and every one here has a party of her own to look after."

Jack bowed with adequate graciousness, but Lady Barbara intervened with a vigorous refusal.

"I couldn't think of dragging him away," she exclaimed. "This is the only ball he ever comes to; and he's been looking after me so much that he hasn't had time to see any of his friends."

"But he can be back within an hour," Lady Pentyre urged. "It's still quite early."

Lady Barbara looked uncertainly at Jack, waiting for him to become more inviting. His face expressed no concern, and he was patiently gaining time by consulting his watch and looking from one to the other of them, as though he had no personal interest in the decision.

"Would that be agreeable to you?" he asked her at length.

"I don't feel that I have any right to spoil your evening."

"Illness is hardly within your control, is it?"

She walked downstairs with a novel sense of failure and a misgiving that she had overestimated his stupidity; yet a man must be more than ordinarily stupid not to appreciate her after the trouble that she had taken. Insisting on an open car, she settled herself in one corner and looked thoughtfully at her companion's reflection in the jolting mirror of the wind-screen. Valentine Arden, who allowed disparagement to become a disease, told her to her face that she had genius; George Oakleigh had said that she had "the clearest-cut personality of her time." And these things were industriously repeated to her.

Rather Lord Crawleigh's daughter than Sir Adolf Erckmann's friend.... But Lord Crawleigh's world had no place for any woman who was above the average. In Canada, in Ireland and in India she had tasted greater personal success before she was sixteen than London could offer her in a life-time. She had seen the government of India at very close quarters; and, after that, it was impossible to feel Sonia Dainton's elation at bobbing to Royalty at the Bodmin Lodge ball in Ascot week. At other times and in other places, dusty, long streets, dazzling white and quivering with heat, had been cleared for her and lined with picked native troops; in an Empire crowded with immemorial soveranties she had been the only daughter of a man who was vicegerent of the Emperor-King.

"You spoke too soon in saying you didn't despise me," she murmured.

They had covered but two of the ten miles, and Jack instinctively avoided altercation. He was no longer interested in a girl who deliberately invited herself to the same house, singled him out and detached him, in an open car and a north-east wind, to pick a quarrel or justify herself.

"If you're feeling ill, why don't you try to go to sleep instead of making conversation?" he suggested.

"I'm not making conversation!" she answered impatiently. "You attacked me on such slender evidence that I was wondering whether you'd any better excuse for attacking people like Sir Adolf, who's a very fine musician——"

"And an impossible bounder," Jack interrupted. "My father pilled him at his club ten years ago; if he put up again, I'd pill him; if he got in, I'd resign."

"And I suppose you'd 'pill' Villon and Benvenuto Cellini and Verlaine——"

"I would, if they were friends of Erckmann," Jack answered cheerfully.

She shivered and lapsed into silence. Talking to Jack was like explaining colour to a blind man. She had never sought out the Erckmann circle; it was one of innumerable circles which a connoisseur in life patronized and sampled for its distinctive atmosphere. Her god-father, Dick Freyton, had kept a string of race-horses at Oxford and taken a double first; he had dined with the Queen one day and entertained a party of comedians and jockeys the next; he had been a gentleman-rider and an ambassador, a soldier and a collector of early printed Bibles, a competent sportsman and a more than competent poet. Touching life at every angle, there was an Elizabethan spaciousness about him;—Loring's father did not forbid him the house because Bessie Galton took her company to Liverpool and he invited them all to stay with him at Poolcup. Freyton was too big to be compromised. And the world had developed so fast that nowadays a woman could touch life at as many angles; for some it was the only thing to do. The queens of the salon were dead, the political hostesses were dying. There was room for one universalist.

They drove to the lodge of Croxton Hall in silence. It was only when she saw him dropping asleep that she fanned the discussion to life.

"It's men like you who kill art in this country," she sighed.

"I can never see why there should be a special code of morals for a fellow because he grows his hair long and plays the fiddle," Jack answered, as he helped her out of the car and rang the bell.

While he explained their return to the butler, Lady Barbara let fall her cloak into a chair and walked to a glowing fire at the end of the hall. In the fender stood a tureen of soup and an urn of cocoa; behind her a big table was invitingly set with sandwiches, cake, fruit, syphons and decanters. Jack watched her for a moment and then explored the table critically.

"Is there anything you'd like me to bring you?" he asked as he chose a cigar and poured himself a brandy and soda. "Don't forget you've had no supper."

She looked at him over one shoulder and sighed contemptuously.

"How characteristic! The indecent irregularity of missing a meal! I eat because I love nice things; one gets a new emotion sometimes. When we were at Ottawa, father took me down to Washington, and one of the secretaries at our embassy fell in love with me. We met at twelve and he was in love with me by a quarter past. I suppose he was a man of method, like you, and never declared his passion under half an hour, so for five minutes we talked about food, and he asked me if I'd ever tasted Baltimore crab-flake. I hadn't. His car was at the door of the chancery, we both got in without a word; at 12:23 we were flying down Connecticut Avenue. We drove to Baltimore without a stop, had our crab-flake and returned to Washington in time for me to have a good rest before dinner. When father began looking for me, some one explained that I'd been taken to see the Congressional Library, and everything was all right till the papers next day came out with great head-lines—'Breakneck Race for a Crab-Flake.' 'Just Bully, Says British Governor-General's Daughter' Then there was the usual unpleasantness.... But the crab-flake was a new emotion." She turned from the fire and joined him at the table. "If I start eating caviar, I never stop."

The butler returned to announce that her maid had gone to bed and to ask whether she should be called.

"Oh, it's all right, thanks," she answered. "I'm feeling much better." She had talked herself into good-humour and, when they were alone again, she looked at Jack with a smile. "Are you enjoying yourself? You look so bored. What shall I do to amuse you?"

She pulled a chair to the fire and beckoned him to her side.

"I'm sorry to seem ungracious," said Jack, as he put down his empty glass, "but I've been commissioned to send you to bed."

"But the others won't be back for hours!"

"Exactly. Barring the servants, we're alone in the house, and it wouldn't look well for us to bolt away from the ball and then sit here talking all night."

Lady Barbara sprang from the chair and faced him with amazement in her eyes.

"My dear creature, do you imagine you're compromising me?"

"That's a strong word. I'm some years older than you, Lady Barbara," he added meaningly.

"But if you knew——"

Jack interrupted her with a shake of the head.

"If you're trying to tell me some of the things you have done, you may spare yourself the trouble. I used to think you were being swept off your feet by the people you went about with. The more stories you tell me, the more I'm tempted to wonder whether you don't set the fashion. Some one's frightfully to blame for not pulling you up, though I know Jim did his best. Does it make no difference to you when a man like that refuses to have you inside his house?"

Lady Barbara walked slowly to the table.

"You must apologize for that, Mr. Waring."

She imagined that she was contending with one man over a single hasty sentence; but behind Jack stood his father, his father's regiment and his father's club, all honestly conservative and gently self-approving. Behind the sentence there lay in support a social philosophy framed in days before England was corrupted by the uncertain morals of the east and the uncouth manners of the west.

"Isn't it true?" demanded Jack, unabashed. "He cabled to his mother from Surinam after the motor smash and that inquest. I wasn't told the exact words, but you haven't been to the house very lately, have you?"

He was so certain of himself—he was always so certain of himself—that the question rang out like a taunt. Lady Barbara felt her self-control weakening.

"And your informant?" she asked, still trying not to yield ground.

"I've really forgotten. Obviously no one in the family. So, you see, there must be several people who know. For what it's worth, I have not handed the story on."

"How chivalrous!—And to a girl that you'd never met!"

"I didn't want Jim to be mixed up in a fresh scandal. And you've driven this country near enough to revolution as it is."

He picked up his hat and was starting towards the stairs, when an unexpected sound stopped him, and he turned to see her burying her face in her hands. It was a surprising collapse in one who seemed to be made of steel, though he wondered whether the tears were an artifice or a novel indulgence of emotion.

"You didn't mean what you said!" she sobbed. "Please say you were only punishing me for taking you away from the ball!"

"I've not the least desire to punish you. You've got great qualities; you were charming at dinner, you're kind and good-natured, you can be fascinating when you like. And then you spoil all you are, all you might be and do, by tricks unworthy of a chorus-girl. Arranging this meeting at all to smooth one ruffled feather of your vanity. The sham headache. Calling me by my Christian name the first time we meet. Things of that kind. That's not the grande dame, Lady Barbara."

She began to collect her gloves and cloak.

"I'm sorry," she said with trembling lips. "You won't be troubled again."

"If you were sorry, you wouldn't try to be dramatic. Your 'curtain,' like your repentance, is only the latest form of the Baltimore crab-flake—a new emotion, a new indulgence.... Look here, I shall be gone before you're up to-morrow; won't you part friends?"

He crossed the hall with a smile and held out his hand without fear of a rebuff. She looked at him and had to confess herself at fault. His heavy overcoat was hanging open, and in his knee-breeches and pink coat he looked slim and boyish; he was a booby at dinner and a clod at the ball; outside his own profession he had no more knowledge or ideas than a schoolboy. Yet she submitted to his criticism almost in silence.

"Won't you part friends?" he repeated.

Lady Barbara could not let him ride off so complacently. She pressed one hand to her side and groped her way to the table; as she leaned against it, the friendliness died out of his smile.

"I shouldn't do that again, if I were you," he counselled, reverting to his slightly nasal drawl; and this time she could have cried without feigning, for she was tired and humiliated by her consistent failure.

"I am ill," she protested. "Needless to say, you don't believe——"

"My dear Lady Barbara, the worst of taking people in by lies is that afterwards they refuse to be taken in by the truth. That always means a dreadful muddle for everybody."

There was no trace of anger in the indolent voice; a lazy, superficial smile played still over the composed face, but she felt that she had touched his vanity, which was so petty that he could allow no one even to chaff him.

"I say, you are revengeful," she cried. "Just because, in the most harmless way——"

"I don't mind any one making the most complete fool of me—once," he interrupted. "A very moderate sense of humour carries that off. One doesn't want to make a habit of it, that's all. And I always think it's a perilous thing to begin playing with the truth."

"So you'll never believe anything I say?"

"We're so very unlikely to meet that it hardly matters. Won't you shake hands?"

She held out the tips of her fingers and, as he released them, caught him by the sleeve of his coat. He noticed that she was biting her lip and had either improved her acting or lapsed into sincerity.

"Are you like Jim?" she asked. "D'you despise me so much that you refuse to meet me?"

He looked carelessly at his sleeve, but she refused to understand the movement of his eyes.

"I should be honoured to meet you. Only I never go anywhere. Lady Pentyre and Lady Knightrider are about our only two links."

"And I suppose Jim will have me turned out of their houses, when he comes back. If you knew how I hated having people angry with me.... Will you meet me, if I don't have any of my objectionable friends, if I'm on my best behaviour——"

"I don't think that your experience of my society can be so alluring as all that," he laughed.

"I've never allowed any other man to lecture me as you've done!"

"Ah, but you invited it. You don't want me to come merely for a continuation of the lecture."

"Perhaps it won't be necessary."

Her voice and eyes softened appealingly—and then became charged with perplexity, as Jack gently removed her fingers from his sleeve.

"Another new emotion, Lady Barbara?" he laughed. "You won't easily convince me that I've changed your character in a night."

"You interest me," she murmured, with a puzzled frown.

"Ah, that rang true! But I'm no good at the modern business of discussing people with themselves. A man like Val Arden does that so much better.... Lady Barbara, are you ever going to say good-night to me?"

"In a minute. Will you come to Connie Maitland's Consumptive Hospital matinÉe after Christmas? It's at the Olympic, and I'm dancing there. I do want you to appreciate me!"

Jack reflected for a moment and then smiled lazily.

"I'll come to the matinÉe, if you'll promise not to perform," he answered. "If I'm not in court.... I know I'm old-fashioned, but I call it intolerable for you to blacken your eyes and rouge your face and make sport for any one who cares to spend a guinea or two for the chance of gaping at you. It cheapens you. I'd as soon put on tights and tie myself in knots on a strip of carpet outside a public-house."

Barbara leant against the table in helpless amazement.

"You're more of a Philistine than my own father!" she cried.

Jack smiled imperturbably.

"And what would you think if Lord Crawleigh came to that same matinÉe and gave a display of juggling with billiard-balls?"

"I should die happy," Barbara answered with a gurgle of laughter; then more seriously, "But why on earth shouldn't he? If he can do it, if the thing's all right in itself, why should the professionals have the monopoly? I'm very good."

"No doubt. But, if you had no more idea of dancing than I have, people would still flock to see Lady Barbara Neave. Now do you understand why I loathe the whole life you lead?"

When, late that night, she thought over the long succession of snubs and insults, Barbara chose this as the most wounding. She had recited and danced, acted and sung on occasions innumerable, always hearing and feeling that she was meeting the professionals on their own ground; they themselves hurried to congratulate her, and she fancied vaguely that she was paying the stage a delicate compliment.

"I've never been told that I hawked my father's position about for advertisement," she answered quietly.

"It's the result."

He picked up his hat again and again held out his hand.

Lady Barbara locked her fingers behind her back and turned away.

"I don't like the feeling that you'll ring for carbolic as soon as I'm out of the room!" she said.

"D'you think I should?"

"You wouldn't wait!" she cried, springing round as though she were going to strike him.

Jack's growing surprise merged in a novel sense of helplessness. The girl had wholly lost control of herself. Her pupils were dilated, her cheeks white with anger and fatigue; one hand gripped the back of her chair, and the other rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball. Not for the first time that night he felt that a man had only himself to blame for getting on to such terms with a woman. A lion's cage could be entered or avoided at will....

Yet he could not escape the feeling that even at the white-heat of passion she was enjoying her scene.

"Do part friends," he begged. "I shouldn't presume to criticize you, if I didn't think you worth it. I ask you—as a favour—to come to that matinÉe with me. Will you?"

Lady Barbara could not decide whether to try once again to punish him; she dared not admit that she was daunted, but she was certainly puzzled. At one moment he insulted her, at another he hoisted her on to a pinnacle and mounted guard below.

"Would you like me to come?" she asked.

"I should love you to."

"I'll come, if you want me to.... Now I think I shall go to bed. It would be a tragedy if we had another scene. Good-night, Mr. Waring."

"Good-night, Lady Barbara."

She looked at him steadily before turning to the stairs, still undecided whether to be angry or intrigued. Jack went into the library, chose himself a book, undressed slowly, read for ten minutes and dropped instantly asleep. Lady Barbara stood for many minutes in front of a long mirror, admiring the black and silver dress and watching the gleam of her arms and shoulders as she moved. Then with careless impatience she loosened the dress, leaving it to fall and lie in a tumbled heap by the fire; shoe followed shoe, stocking followed stocking; her maid would repair the havoc in the morning, and it was a relief to lapse into untidiness after so many hours of Jack Waring's orderly influence. Pulling an armchair to the fire she began to brush her hair. Six hours before, as her maid had brushed it for her, she had rehearsed the meeting with Jack up to the point when he apologized for his presumption in criticizing her. If only she had stopped then! But he was wholly different from her preconception of him; fully as 'superior'—and with as little reason—but disappointing as an intellectual antagonist; he was commonplace in mind and yet had a certain blunt stubbornness of character, a refusal to be stampeded—together with an indifference which still piqued her.

And the indifference was broken by a solicitude which he expressed in terms to earn himself a horse-whipping. Her eyes were blinded by a hot rush of shame when she remembered her gentle words and appealing voice at the piano. "I'm not as bad as you expected?" Humility was a pleasant emotion, but a losing card. At their next encounter....

She laid aside the brush and sat staring into the fire. The room grew gradually colder, but she did not notice it. Only when her ears caught the sound of subdued voices on the stairs did she rouse with a shiver and jump into bed.