"You won't be the first woman he's kept!" be retorted, and stamped out
of the billiard-room.

The girl gave a little gasp. Then she reddened with anger.

"How dare he?" she cried, stamping her foot; "how dare he?"

She sank on the lounge and, burying her face in her hands, burst into
tears.

"Oh, Robin, Robin, dear!" she sobbed--incomprehensibly, for she was a
woman.




CHAPTER II


AT TWILIGHT

There is a delicious snugness, a charming lack of formality, about the
ceremony of afternoon tea in an English country-house--it is much too
indefinite a rite to dignify it by the name of meal--which makes it the
most pleasant reunion of the day. For English country-house parties
consist, for the most part, of a succession of meals to which the guests
flock the more congenially as, in the interval, they have contrived to
avoid one another's companionship.