"And you are enjoying yourself?" Edmund went on. "Come, let us sit
behind those palms. You look as if things were going smoothly."

"It is delightful."

Molly cast her grey eyes over the moving groups that were strolling
about the ballroom, and over the lights and flowers and the band
preparing to begin again, and then looked up into Edmund's face. It was
a slow, luxurious movement, fitted to the rather unusually developed
face and expression. Most debutantes are crude in their enjoyment, but
Molly was beginning London at twenty-one, not at eighteen, and
circumstances made her more mature than her actual experience of society
warranted. Yet it seemed to Edmund that the untamed element in her was
the more striking from the contrast. Molly accepted social delights and
social conventions as a young and gentle tigress might enjoy the soft
turf of an English lawn.

The defiance in her tone when she alluded to Groombridge faded now.

"I have six balls in the next four nights, and one opera, and we are
going to Ascot, then back to London, then to Cowes, and, after that, I
am going to the Italian Lakes and to Switzerland, and wherever I like."

"Is Mrs. Delaport Green so very unselfish?"

"Oh, no; I am only going to stay with Adela till the end of the season,
and then I am going abroad with two girls who are quite delightful, and
in October the flat and the governess are to come into existence."

"Yes; everything--everything perfect," murmured Grosse, looking at her