ing up. "Let's go next
Wednesday."

"Oh, I can't be ready quite as soon as that, Romer dear! Let's go on
Tuesday. I'll arrange it all."

"Good!" said Romer, beaming.

"And I'll get Harry to come down with us."

"Thought he was going yachting with the Walmers?"

"Oh no, he's not, after all.... He doesn't really care for the sea."

"Oh!"

"Harry, of course, is sorry for Van Buren," continued Valentia. "And yet
he takes Daphne's part about Cyril Foster. He knows it's spoiling her,
but he thinks she ought to be spoilt; he's so fond of Daphne."

"Why doesn't he marry her himself?" asked Romer.

"Harry?" She looked at him in surprise. "Why, Romer, what a harpist you
are. If I've told you once, I've told you a hundred times, he never
marries! Harry has a great many bad habits, goodness knows. But marrying
isn't one of them."

"Do you think he's keen on some one else?" asked Romer after a rather
long pause.

She seemed annoyed at the question, then smiled again.

"I don't know! The other day I called at the studio unexpectedly to ask
for something I'd forgotten, and found Harry improvising at the
piano--you know that way he has of improvising from memory--an
inaccurate memory--of some well-known composer. I've never known him do
it except when he wanted to--please some woman. Well, Lady Walmer was
there, leaning over the piano and listening. Should you think from that
he's keen, as you call it, on her?"

"Lady Walmer! At her age!"

"Why, Romer, she's no older than anybody else! It doesn't matter
nowadays in the very slightest degree whether one is twenty-eight, or
thirty-eight, or even forty-eight. To a modern man it's all exactly the
same. Of course, if a flapper is what is required, well then, naturally,
he must be shown to another department. But apart from that--why, Lady
Walmer would be quite as dangerous a rival for me as a woman ten years
or twenty years younger. And I'm not twenty-five yet."

"Rival to _you_? What do you mean?"

Romer stared at her, a spark of his fanatic admiration showing in his
eyes.

She laughed and hurried on.

"Nothing. I never mean anything. I know what you think, Harry is not a
marrying man, but he might become one. But a girl like Alec Walmer! With
the figure of a suffragette and the mind of a canary who plays cricket,
or a goose who goes in for golf----"

"Heaps of cash."

"Yes, I know. But Harry's an artist--he needs sympathy."

"He's got his head screwed on the r