't have
mentioned the subject, if I thought it was going to spoil your dinner.
But I very nearly congratulated you publicly. . . . Let's see if we're
all here."

They returned to the fire, and Ettrick called the roll. Throughout
dinner, when Eric ought to have been thinking over his speech, he sat
dazed by the warning and his own blindness. Six weeks before, Lady
Maitland was proclaiming that he and Barbara were in love with each
other; now a dry stick of a law lord, retiring and uninterested in
gossip, heard of their engagement from a dozen different mouths and was
an inch removed from congratulating him before half the club. Eric might
assume that other eyes had observed him calling for her, shopping with
her; it was accepted that, when they dined in the same house, he should
always take her home; it was almost accepted that one could not be
invited to dine without the other. . . .

It hardly lay in his mouth to tell Barbara that she must not compromise
herself.

A waiter entered with a telegram for Lord Ettrick, which he read and
handed to Eric.

"_Regret confined bed severe chill all success to dinner and
congratulations and best wishes to our distinguished young friend._"

It was signed by the one absentee, whose chair still stood empty on the
opposite side. Eric suddenly remembered Barbara's note: "_Imagine I'm
sitting by you, darling._" As he read it, he wished that he could have
brought her there; in the morning-room he had wished--no, he had thought
how proud he would have been to tell Lord Ettrick that the story was
true. If he could see her now in the empty chair, a rose behind one ear,
a silk shawl broidered with grey birds in flight, as on the evening when
they first met. . . .

But she would hardly come dressed as Carmen. And, however she arrayed
herself, the Thespian Club would not admit her. . . .

"Well, have you thought out your speech?" asked Lord Ettrick.

"I've been thinking about what you said before dinner," Eric answered.

"Don't take it too seriously. You know how people talk."

"Yes, but I don't want them to talk like that about _her_! She's the
best friend I've got."

He hesitated in surprise at his own vehemence.

"Have you observed one thing?" Lord Ettrick enquired after a pause.
"Neither of us has mentioned the lady's name."

"Well----"

"Exactly. Well, if it wasn't necessary for me, who after all don't go
about very much--But you needn't take it to heart."

"Oh, I'm not