‘Oh, don’t apologise,’ cried Linda, with good humour, willing, like most of her sex, to condone the accusation of over-youth. ‘And Madame Corbie accepts, conditionally. I have been paying my court to aged ladies half the morning! So, unconditionally, does Miss Tighe. As regards chaperonage, one may say really--really----’ hesitated Lord Rex, feeling in his guilty soul how red he grew, ‘one may say, Mrs. Thorne, that, in the matter of chaperons, there will be an embarrassment of riches.’ ‘Especially as mamma never allows me to go anywhere without herself. Was it about the superabundance of chaperons that you knew we should attack you?’ Rosie Verschoyle asked the question in her gay, thin little voice, her unpremeditated manner, yet with a directness of aim that poor Lord Rex had not the cleverness to parry. ‘Attack me? Why, that was only a foolish joke, don’t you know! Yes, we--we have Mrs. Verschoyle and the Archdeaconess as chaperons-in-chief. Only, poor Mrs. Verschoyle, the moment the _Princess_ moves, will be in the cabin, and the Archdeaconess----’ ‘Try not to look so conscious. The Archdeaconess?’ ‘If the wind veers between this and Wednesday, will not start at all. And so, as we must have a married lady to do hostess for us, and as you, Mrs. Thorne, are also not a first-rate sailor, I have asked Mrs. Arbuthnot.’ A heavy silence followed upon this announcement. Linda Thorne was the first to break it. ‘And Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted? I need hardly ask the question.’ ‘Yes,’ returned Lord Rex, staunchly enough, ‘I am glad to say that Mrs. Arbuthnot has accepted.’ Rosie Verschoyle turned over and examined a band of silver on her round white wrist. ‘Mrs. Arbuthnot? Surely that is the same person we saw with Marjorie Bartrand at the rose-show? How wonderfully handsome she is! Mamma has talked of nothing else. One will be quite too glad to see her near. In these democratic days we must all bow unquestioningly before Beauty. The capital B renders it abstract.’ Lord Rex felt the speech to be ungenerous. Vague questionings that he had once or twice held within himself, as to whether he might or might not be in danger of liking Miss Verschoyle too well, received an impromptu solution at this moment. He was in no danger at all: held the local estimate of her good looks, even, to be overstrained. As she stood before him, in her fulness of youthful grace, the delicate profile held aloft, the little cruel sentences escaping, one by one, from her pouting red lips, Rosie’s prettiness seemed changed to Rex Basire as though the wand of some malignant fairy godmother had secretly touched her. ‘My political opinions outstep democracy, Miss Verschoyle. But if I were as starched a Tory as--as my own father, by Jove! I should think Mrs. Arbuthnot’s society an honour. I don’t understand that sort of thing, the tone people put on in speaking of a woman whose only crime is her beauty.’