‘It will be my husband’s cousin once removed, Ella Corbie of La Hauterive,’ observed Madame Corbie blandly. ‘The Hauterive yellow roses are fine this year. I have not a word to say against their “Celine Forestier.” But, in my poor opinion, the Archdeacon’s “Maréchal Niel” ought to have taken the prize. Yes, yes,’--Madame Corbie gazed through her smoked spectacles into the perspective of history--‘Ella Corbie is still nice looking. I remember her, dressed for her first evening party, more than a dozen years ago, and now----’ ‘My dear Madame Corbie! I beg a thousand pardons, your cup is empty--allow me to set it down,’ interrupted Lord Rex Basire. For at this precise moment the perfect features, the lovely complexion, were again setting towards him in the crowd. But Madame Corbie, the head of our local society, rose to the occasion, and to her feet. ‘Let me have a good look, Lord Rex, and if it is my cousin Ella, I will introduce you to her. A young lady walking, you say, with Marjorie Bartrand? That is certainly most unlike Ella! The Hauterive family keep so exclusively to themselves. Still----’ ‘There they are--coming this way, by Jove!’ cried Lord Rex breathlessly. ‘You see the girl I mean? Splendid girl in black--lace ruffle--a red rose lying on her hair?’ Madame Corbie looked through her smoke-coloured glasses straight. Then she looked through her smoke-coloured glasses obliquely. Then she pushed them high away on her ample forehead, and gazed stoically upward in the broad light of the merry June day. ‘The person,’ she pronounced, with awful solemnity, ‘who is walking with Marjorie Bartrand of Tintajeux _does not belong to this island_.’ And so speaking, and with the folds of her satin doing credit to the price paid for them, Madame Corbie there, in full presence of the inferior clergy’s wives, sat down. ‘Ah! I thought not. Thought I had never seen such a pretty woman in the place,’ observed Lord Rex, addressing his own consciousness, rather than the ill-pleased ears of the Archdeaconess. ‘What are the odds I don’t get properly introduced and properly snubbed before another quarter of an hour is over!’ As a preliminary step Lord Rex rushed back to the refreshment tent, Madame Corbie’s tea-cup his ostensible excuse. He threw himself on Linda Thorne’s ambiguous sympathy. ‘Mrs. Thorne, you know all about every one, by fine natural discernment. I’ve heard you say so a hundred times. Who is this wonderful girl in black that Marjorie Bartrand is walking about with?’ A suppressed smile lurked round Linda Thorne’s thin lips. ‘Let us give Mr. Arbuthnot the task of learning her pedigree. It is an act of charity always to find work for idle men. Mr. Arbuthnot,’ she turned to Gaston, ‘I want you to find out something for the peace of Lord Rex Basire’s mind and of my own existence. Who is this wonderful girl in black who is walking about the Arsenal grounds with Marjorie Bartrand?’