is all very
well--except when it comes to marriage. Then even idealists like Lady
Tatham knock under."

"I wish you may be right. Anyway, she won't send him to New York!"

"No need! Blue blood--impoverished!--that's my forecast."

Gerald smiled--ungenially.

"Victoria would positively dislike an heiress. Jolly easy to take that
sort of line--on forty thousand a year! But as to birth, the family, in
my opinion, has a right to be considered."

Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at his
companion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions are
sometimes intolerable.

"Pretty mixed--your stocks--some of them--by now!"

"Not ours. You'd find, if you looked into it, that we've descended very
straight. There's been no carelessness."

Delorme threw up his hands.

"Good heavens! Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for a
family nowadays. A strong blood--that's what you want--a blood that will
stand this modern life--and you'll never get that by mating in and in.
Ah! here come the others."

They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of the
house. The rector and Mrs. Deacon--the gold cross on the rector's
waistcoat shining in the diffused light. Lady Barbara Woolson, the other
uninvited guest, Victoria's first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacket
and black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black,
hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.

But in front--some little way in front--there walked a pair for whom all
the rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so charged
with meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summer
sky.

A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading
the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as
though he led in the fairy queen. So delicate were her proportions, so
bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that
Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell
into his native tongue.

"Sapristi!--quelle petite fee avez-vous la?"

"My sister-in-law talked of some neighbours--"

"Mais elle entre en reine! My dear fellow, it looks dangerous."

Gerald pulled his moustaches, looking hard at the advancing pair.

"A pretty little minx--I must have it out with Victoria." But his tone
was doubtful. It was not easy to have things out with Victoria.

*