l. Very much mistress of
herself, Damaris had danced straight through the programme with an air of
almost defiant vivacity. Now, as it seemed, her mood had changed and
sobered. For presently Colonel Carteret saw her bosom heave, while she
fetched a long sigh and, raising her head, glanced upwards, her great
eyes searching the shadowed space of the verandah.

The cool lunar brightness flooded her upturned face, her bare neck and
arms, the glittering folds of her satin gown. She was exceedingly fair to
look upon just now. For an appreciable length of time her glance met
Carteret's and held it; giving him--though the least neurotic of men,
calm of body and of mind--a strange sensation as of contact with an
electric current which tingled through every nerve and vein. And this,
although he perceived that, dazzled by the moonlight, she either did not
see or quite failed to recognize him. An expression of disappointment,
akin, so he read it, to hope defeated, crossed her face. She lowered her
eyes, and moved slowly forward along the path, the boys on either side
her. Again Peregrine Ditton took up his tale--in softened accents though
still as one sorely injured and whose temper consequently inclines not
unjustly to the volcanic.

"Upon my honour, I think you might have given me just a minute's law,
Miss Verity," he protested. "It was no fault of mine being late. Maud
Callowgas kept me toddling to the most unconscionable extent. First she
wanted an ice, and then a tumbler of lemon squash; and then she lost her
fan, or pretended she did, and expected me to hunt for the beastly thing.
I give you my word I was as rude as sin, in hope of shaking her off; but
she didn't, or wouldn't, see what I was driving at. There was no getting
away from her. I tell you she sticks like a burr, that girl, once she
lays hold of you. Octopuses aren't in it. Her power of adhesion is
something utterly frantic "--

Here Ellice cut in with a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret,
inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young
voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking and remonstrant.

As he listened, still conscious of contact with that surprising electric
current, Carteret found himself taking stock of his own forty-nine years
with swift and lively repugnance. To accept the sum of them, and the
limitations and restrictions that sum is currently supposed to entail,
proved just now astonishingly difficult. Dama