d at sound of her name.

"You're getting frightfully old, Ricky. It's time you married and
settled down."

"I've settled down without marrying. You can't do both, you know."

The drawl in his voice unconsciously irritated the girl.

"Marrying and shaking up is more in your line," she retorted. "You're
too successful, too rich, too selfish, Ricky."

"My dear, I lead my life, and you lead yours. Why should either try to
disturb the other?"

"Because you lead such a rotten life. Honestly, Ricky, don't you get
sick of gadding about night and day with people who only condescend to
know you because you're a fashion?"

He smiled lazily at the uncompromising vigour of her criticism.

"To begin with, I don't do it night and day----"

"Ricky, you simply live in your Lady Barbara's pocket. Lots of people
have told me. If I were you, I wouldn't let her make a fool of me. After
all, you _are_ somebody. Is she going to marry you?"

"I haven't asked her. She's a great friend of mine----"

"H'm. Everybody asks me when you're going to be married. Honestly, they
do, Ricky. Three people this week. That's why I say she's making a fool
of you. I don't think you know how people are talking."

"Perhaps I do, but I didn't know it had spread as far as here," he
sighed.

"Well, you oughtn't to do it; and she oughtn't either," Sybil declared.

Eric gazed long into the fire without answering. How on earth had they
come to discuss Babs? He had been dreaming with wistful contentment of
simpler, less embarrassed times when at this hour a red-faced nurse
would enter and carry him, sleepily protesting, to bed. Sybil had
somehow forced the conversation, they had argued--and his father and
mother had listened without taking part, thereby ranging themselves on
Sybil's side or at least admitting that she was telling them nothing
new. . . . Sybil was a tigress for loyalty! Ever since she had decided
that he was to marry Agnes, she would have mauled and clawed any other
woman who got in the way. And when that woman trifled with the devotion
of a Lane and made a fool of one of the sacred family . . . No sister
ever imagined that a man could take care of himself. After all, who had
suffered by his tragic intimacy with Barbara?

"_As if I'd murdered her._" What was Babs doing now?

He looked at his watch and pulled himself, stretching and yawning, to
his feet.

"I shall go to sleep if I stay here," he said. "Is any one going to
dress?"

T