y, with her turned-up nose, looked just about as usual, but Jane had
a new frock on which was exactly the colour of the big, appealing eyes,
with their trick of following people about. She looked a little pale and
pathetic, which somehow gave her a specious air of being pretty, which
she really was not at all. The swaying young thinness of those very
slight girls whose soft summer muslins make them look like delicate
bags tied in the middle with fluttering ribbons, has almost invariably
a foolish attraction for burly young men whose characters are chiefly
marked by lack of forethought, and Lady Alanby saw Tommy's robust young
body give a sort of jerk as the party of three was brought across the
grass. After it he pulled himself together hastily, and looked stiff
and pink, shaking hands as if his elbow joint was out of order, being at
once too loose and too rigid. He began to be clumsy with the bread and
butter, and, ceasing his talk with Miss Vanderpoel, fell into silence.
Why should he go on talking? he thought. Miss Vanderpoel was a cracking
handsome girl, but she was too clever for him, and he had to think
of all sorts of new things to say when he talked to her. And--well, a
fellow could never imagine himself stretched out on the grass, puffing
happily away at a pipe, with a girl like that sitting near him,
smiling--the hot turf smelling almost like hay, the hot blue sky curving
overhead, and both the girl and himself perfectly happy--chock full
of joy--though neither of them were saying anything at all. You could
imagine it with some girls--you DID imagine it when you wakened early on
a summer morning, and lay in luxurious stillness listening to the birds
singing like mad.

Lady Jane was a nicely-behaved girl, and she tried to keep her
following blue eyes fixed on the grass, or on Lady Anstruthers, or
Miss Vanderpoel, but there was something like a string, which sometimes
pulled them in another direction, and once when this had happened--quite
against her will--she was terrified to find Lady Alanby's glass lifted
and fixed upon her.

As Lady Alanby's opinion of Mrs. Manners was but a poor one, and as
Mrs. Manners was stricken dumb by her combined dislike and awe of Lady
Alanby, a slight stiffness might have settled upon the gathering if
Betty had not made an effort. She applied herself to Lady Alanby and
Mrs. Manners at once, and ended by making them talk to each other. When
they left the tea table under the trees