"I noticed," observed Lady Cantourne, "that he asked for a dance."

"And apparently got one--or more."

"Apparently so, Sir John."

"Moreover--"

Lady Cantourne turned on him with her usual vivacity.

"Moreover?" she repeated.

"He did not need to write it down on the card; it was written there
already."

She closed her fan with a faint smile

"I sometimes wonder," she said, "whether, in our young days, you
were so preternaturally observant as you are now."

"No," he answered, "I was not. I affected scales of the very
opaquest description, like the rest of my kind."

In the meantime this man's son was going about his business with a
leisurely savoir-faire which few could rival. Jack Meredith was the
beau-ideal of the society man in the best acceptation of the word.
One met him wherever the best people congregated, and he invariably
seemed to know what to do and how to do it better than his compeers.
If it was dancing in the season, Jack Meredith danced, and no man
rivalled him. If it was grouse shooting, Jack Meredith held his gun