rightness and
far-awayness of the look. She was about to say something in comment,
but other guests entered, and it was impossible. She watched, however,
from a little distance, while talking gaily to other guests; she
watched at the dinner-table, as Jasmine, seated between her two
royalties, talked with gaiety, with pretty irony, with respectful
badinage; and no one could be so daring with such ceremonious respect
at the same time as she. Yet through it all Lady Tynemouth saw her
glance many times with a strange, strained inquiry at Rudyard, seated
far away opposite her; at another big, round table.

"There's something wrong here," Lady Tynemouth said to herself, and
wondered why Ian Stafford was not present. Mennaval was there, eagerly
seeking glances. These Jasmine gave with a smiling openness and
apparent good-fellowship, which were not in the least compromising.
Lady Tynemouth saw Mennaval's vain efforts, and laughed to herself, and
presently she even laughed with her neighbour about them.

"What an infant it is!" she said to her table companion. "Jasmine Byng
doesn't care a snap of her finger about Mennaval."

"Does she care a snap for anybody?" asked the other. Then he added,
with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself:
"Where is the great man--where's Stafford to-night?"

"Counting his winnings, I suppose." Lady Tynemouth's face grew soft.
"He has done great things for so young a man. What a distance he has
gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi
Falls!"

Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite
happy. When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying
herself. In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to
spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by
her frank platonic affection.

"Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night," said her table companion
after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still
might do.

"The war--it means so much to him," said Lady Tynemouth. Yet she had
seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was
happening in this household.

The other demurred.

"But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time. He
didn't seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed
upset too, so pale and anxious-looking."

"I'll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is
anything," said Lady