* *

'It seems too awful I should have been with you such a long time this
afternoon,' she exclaimed.

'It _isn't_ long.'

'And sometimes it seems so dreadful to think I can't be with you
always.'

'Yes, doesn't it? Mavis dear, will you do up your hair and come out to
dinner?'

'Vincy dear, I think I'd better not, because of Aunt Jessie.'

'Oh, very well; all right. Then you will another time?'

'Oh, you don't want me to stay?'

'Yes, I do; do stay.'

'No, next time--next Tuesday.'

'Very well, very well.'

He took a dark red carnation out of one of the vases and pinned it on
to her coat.

'The next time I see you,' she said, 'I want to have a long, _long_
talk.'

'Oh yes; we must, mustn't we?'

He took her downstairs, put her into a cab. It was half-past six.

He felt something false, worrying, unreliable and incalculable in
Mavis. She didn't seem real.... He wished she were fortunate and happy;
but he wished even more that he were never going to see her again. And
still!...

He walked a little way, then got into a taxi and drove to see Edith.
When he was in this peculiar condition of mind--the odd mixture of
self-reproach, satisfaction, amusement and boredom that he felt now
--he always went to see Edith, throwing himself into the little affairs
of her life as if he had nothing else on his mind. He was a little
anxious about Edith. It seemed to him that since Aylmer had been away
she had altered a little.

CHAPTER XVI

More of the Mitchells

Edith had become an immense favourite with the Mitchells. They hardly
ever had any entertainment without her. Her success with their friends
delighted Mrs Mitchell, who was not capable of commonplace feminine
jealousy, and who regarded Edith as a find of her own. She often
reproached Winthrop, her husband, for having known Bruce eight years
without discovering his charming wife.

One evening they had a particularly gay party. Immediately after dinner
Mitchell had insisted on dressing up, and was solemnly announced in his
own house as Prince Gonoff, a Russian noble. He had a mania for
disguising himself. He had once travelled five hundred miles under the
name of Prince Gotoffski, in a fur coat, a foreign accent, a false
moustache and a special saloon carriage. Indeed, only his wife knew all
the secrets of Mitchell's wild early career of unpractical jokes, to
some of which he still clung. When he was younger he had carried it
pretty far. She e