was not long in coming out. They had been compelled to dodge Lady Sarah;
only a bolt up a side road had prevented them from meeting her carriage
face to face just outside Breysgate Park.

"You're playing truants, I'm afraid!" said Jenny, but with no air of
rebuke.

Loft announced lunch; we went in without waiting for Margaret. She did
not appear till we had been eating for ten minutes. By that time Jenny
had both her guests well in hand. If her manner to Dormer was cordial,
yet it lacked the touch of intimacy, of old-time friendliness, which she
had for Lacey. But neither was she any longer so candidly Lacey's
friend--and so definitely nothing else--as she had once thought it
politic to become. She did not now hold her wiles in leash; she loosed
them in pursuit of him, even as in the earliest days of their
acquaintance.

The door opened. Jenny's eyes flew quickly to it; she stopped talking
and seemed to wait for something. Margaret came running in, her hair
bright in the summer sun, her eyes sparkling and her cheeks glowing--the
very picture of radiant youth and beauty. Only a few feet separated me
from Lacey. I heard him say "By Jove!" half under his breath.

Jenny heard, too. "Here's Margaret," she said. The girl ran to her, took
her hand, and began to make a thousand excuses for being late.

"And, after all the rest, that nice clergyman stopped me on the road and
talked to me!"

"You mean Mr. Alison? He stopped you?" Jenny looked interested. "What
did he say?"

"Oh, nothing--only that he'd known my father, and that he hoped I was
very happy. Of course I am--with you!"

"There's your place--between Mr. Dormer and Austin. Sit down, or Loft
won't give you any lunch."

Between Dormer and me was opposite Jenny and Lacey--Chat and I each
sitting at an end of the oblong table. Jenny showed no remission in her
efforts to keep Lacey amused--indeed she rather engrossed him, and the
other four of us talked together. But from time to time his eyes strayed
across the table--and once he caught Miss Margaret studying his handsome
face with evident interest. The girl blushed. Jenny was smiling
contentedly as she regained her guest's attention.

Dormer made great play with the pretty girl. It did not take long to
discover that this was Dormer's way. He had the gift--one enviable to
slow-tongued folk like myself--of a perpetual flow of small talk; this
he peppered copiously--I must confess to thinking that it needed
seaso