't I?" she said. "We were going straight to
Carmarthen House, you know. Come and sit in this corner for a moment,
and order me some coffee. I suppose there isn't any less public place!"

"I fear not," he answered. "You will perhaps be unobserved behind this
palm."

She sank into a low chair, and he seated himself beside her. She sighed
contentedly.

"Dear me!" she said. "Do men like being run after like this?"

Mr. Sabin raised his eyebrows.

"I understood," he said, "that you had something to say to me of
importance."

She shot a quick look up at him.

"Don't be horrid," she said in a low tone. "Of course I wanted to see
you. I wanted to explain. Give me one of your cigarettes."

He laid his case silently before her. She took one and lit it, watching
him furtively all the time. The man brought their coffee. The place was
almost empty now, and some of the lights were turned down.

"It is very kind of you," he said slowly, "to honour me by so much
consideration, but if you have much to say perhaps it would be better
if you permitted me to call upon you to-morrow. I am afraid of depriving
you of your ball--and your friends will be getting impatient."

"Bother the ball--and my friends," she exclaimed, a certain strained
note in her tone which puzzled him. "I'm not obliged to go to the thing,
and I don't want to. I've invented a headache, and they won't even
expect me. They know my headaches."

"In that case," Mr. Sabin said, "I am entirely at your service."

She sighed, and looked up at him through a little cloud of tobacco
smoke.

"What a wonderful man you are," she said softly. "You accept defeat with
the grace of a victor. I believe that you would triumph as easily with
a shrug of the shoulders. Haven't you any feeling at all? Don't you know
what it is like to feel?"

He smiled.

"We both come," he said, "of a historic race. If ancestry is worth
anything it should at least teach us to go about without pinning our
hearts upon our sleeves."

"But you," she murmured, "you have no heart."

He looked down upon her then with still cold face and steady eyes.

"Indeed," he said, "you are mistaken."

She moved uneasily in her chair. She was very pale, except for a faint
spot of pink colour in her cheeks.

"It is very hard to find, then," she said, speaking quickly, her bosom
rising and falling, her eyes always seeking to hold his. "To-night you
see what I have done--I have, sent away my friends--and my