She returned his look interrogatively.

"I thought you might be going there--oh, not in that capacity!
But there are to be a lot of your set--Gwen Van Osburgh, the
Wetheralls, Lady Cressida Raith--and the George Dorsets."

She paused a moment before the last name, and shot a query
through her lashes; but he remained imperturbable.

"Mrs. Trenor asked me; but I can't get away till the end of the
week; and those big parties bore me."

"Ah, so they do me," she exclaimed.

"Then why go?"

"It's part of the business--you forget! And besides, if I didn't,
I should be playing bezique with my aunt at Richfield Springs."

"That's almost as bad as marrying Dillworth," he agreed, and they
both laughed for pure pleasure in their sudden intimacy.

She glanced at the clock.

"Dear me! I must be off. It's after five."

She paused before the mantelpiece, studying herself in the mirror
while she adjusted her veil. The attitude revealed the long slope
of her slender sides, which gave a kind of wild-wood grace to her
outline--as though she were a captured dryad subdued to the