proposed to Helen. The girl said neither yes nor no, but she had eyes
and a smile which needed no translation, so I kissed her (it was in a
conservatory at a dance) and was happy--for a fortnight.

Then came this bidding to dinner. Lady Blantock wrote the invitation,
of course, but it was natural to suppose that she did it to please her
daughter. It happened to be my birthday, and I fancied that Helen had
kept the date in mind. Besides, the selection of the guests had
apparently been made with an eye to my pleasure.

There was Jack Winston, who had lately married an American heiress,
not because she was an heiress, but because she was adorable; there
was the heiress herself, _née_ Molly Randolph, whom I had known
through Winston's letters before I saw her lovely, laughing face;
there was Sir Horace Jerveyson, the richest grocer in the world, whom
I suspected Lady Blantock of actually regarding as a human being, and
a suitable successor to the late Sir James. Besides these, there was
only myself, Montagu Lane; and I believed that the dinner had been
arranged with a view to my claims as leading man in the love drama of
which Helen Blantock was leading lady, the other characters in the
scene merely being "on" as our "support." If this idea argued conceit,
I was punished.

It was with the _entrée_ that the blow fell, and I had a curious,
impersonal sort of feeling that on every night to come, should I live
for a hundred years, each future _entrée_ of each future dinner
would recall the sensation of this moment. Something inside me, that
was myself yet not myself, chuckled at the thought, and made a note to
avoid _entrées_.