I wish they'd move on a little faster and talk a
little less. No! Only thirty. Nice sociable number, I call it, for a
round table. I asked Victor Macheson, the man who's so rude to us all
every Thursday afternoon for a guinea a time--I don't know why we pay it
to be abused,--but he wouldn't come. I met him before he developed, and
I don't think he liked me."

"You got my telegram?" Deyes asked, as he unfolded his napkin.

Wilhelmina nodded.

"Yes!" she answered. "It was very good of you to warn me. I have had--a
letter already. The campaign has begun."

Deyes nodded.

"Chosen your weapons yet?" he asked.

"I haven't much choice, have I?" she answered, a little bitterly. "I
fight, of course."

Deyes was carefully scanning the menu through his horn-rimmed eyeglass.

"Becassine a la Broche," he murmured. "I must remember that."

Then he turned in his chair and looked at Wilhelmina.

"You are worrying," he declared abruptly.

She shrugged her shoulders, alabaster white, rising from the unrelieved
black of her velvet gown.

"My maid's fault," she added. "I ought to have worn white. Of course I'm
worrying. I don't care about carrying the signs of it about with me
though. I think I shall have to adopt Peggy's advice, and go to the
rouge-pot."

"Perhaps," he said deliberately, "it will not be necessary."

She looked up at him quickly. His words sounded encouraging.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that a way may be found to induce a certain gentleman to return
to his native country and stay there," Deyes said smoothly. "After
dinner we are going to have some talk. Please oblige me now by
abandoning the discussion and eating something. Ah! that champagne will
do you good."

Her neighbour on the other side addressed her, and Wilhelmina was
conscious of a sudden lightening of the load upon her heart. Like every
one else, she had confidence in this tall, self-contained man whose life
was somewhat of a mystery even to his friends, and who had about him
that suggestion of power which reticence nearly always brings. He was
going to help her. She pushed all those miserable thoughts away from
her. She became herself again.

"Let no one imagine," Lady Peggy said, carefully knocking the end of a
cigarette upon the table, "that I am going to try to catch the eyes of
all you women, and go sailing away with my nose in the air to look at
engravings in the drawing-room. You can just get up and go when you
like, any or all