ble, Ruddy, my man. How can I send Ian Stafford away?
It's too late to put him off."

"There's no need to put him off or to send him away--such old friends
as you are. Why shouldn't he dine with you a deux? I'm the only person
that's got anything to say about that."

She expressed no surprise, she really felt none. He had forgotten that,
coming up from Scotland, he had told her of this dinner with his
friends, and at the moment she asked Ian Stafford to dine she had
forgotten it also; but she remembered it immediately afterwards, and
she had said nothing, done nothing.

As Byng spoke, however, a curious expression emerged from the far
depths of her eyes--emerged, and was instantly gone again to the
obscurity whence it came. She had foreseen that he would insist on
Stafford dining with her; but, while showing no surprise--and no
perplexity--there was a touch of demureness in her expression as she
answered:

"I don't want to seem too conventional, but--"

"There should be a little latitude in all social rules," he rejoined.
"What nonsense! You are prudish, Jasmine. Allow yourself some latitude."

"Latitude, not license," she returned. Having deftly laid on him the
responsibility for this evening's episode, this excursion into the
dangerous fields of past memory and sentiment and perjured faith, she
closed the book of her own debit and credit with a smile of
satisfaction.

"Let me look at you," he said, standing her off from him.

Holding her hand, he turned her round like a child to be inspected.
"Well, you're a dream," he added, as she released herself and swept
into a curtsey, coquetting with her eyes as she did so. "You're
wonderful in blue--a flower in the azure," he added. "I seem to
remember that gown before--years ago--"

She uttered an exclamation of horror. "Good gracious, you wild and
ruthless ruffian! A gown--this gown--years ago! My bonny boy, do you
think I wear my gowns for years?"

"I wear my suits for years. Some I've had seven years. I've got a
frock-coat I bought for my brother Jim's wedding, ten years ago, and it
looks all right--a little small now, but otherwise 'most as good as
new."

"What a lamb, what a babe, you are, Ruddy! Like none that ever lived.
Why, no woman wears her gowns two seasons, and some of them rather hate
wearing them two times."

"Then what do they do with them--after the two times?"

"Well, for a while, perhaps, they keep them to look at and gloat over,
if they l