"You wouldn't speak in that light, careless tone if you knew her!
Well, you'll see her tonight. She's coming here to dinner."

"Yes, sir."

"Miss Mariner will be here, too. A foursome. Tell Mrs Parker to pull
up her socks and give us something pretty ripe. Soup, fish, all that
sort of thing. _She_ knows. And let's have a stoup of malvoisie from
the oldest bin. This is a special occasion!"

"Her ladyship will be meeting Miss Mariner for the first time, sir?"

"You've put your finger on it! Absolutely the first time on this or
any stage! We must all rally round and make the thing a success."

"I am sure Mrs Parker will strain every nerve, sir." Parker moved to
the door, carrying the rejected egg, and stepped aside to allow a
tall, well-built man of about thirty to enter. "Good morning, Sir
Derek."

"Morning, Parker."

Parker slid softly from the room. Derek Underhill sat down at the
table. He was a strikingly handsome man, with a strong, forceful
face, dark, lean and cleanly shaven. He was one of those men whom a
stranger would instinctively pick out of a crowd as worthy of note.
His only defect was that his heavy eyebrows gave him at times an
expression which was a little forbidding. Women, however, had never
been repelled by it. He was very popular with women, not quite so
popular with men--always excepting Freddie Rooke, who worshipped him.