"I understand," he said. "She came late, and you have a headache. Those are the two essential facts of the case--eh?" "Yes. Hurry!" said Joan, giving her guardian a push. "Joey," said Hughie, "you're a brick!" * * * * * Half an hour later the members of the Midfield Hunt Ball were electrified to behold Miss Joan Gaymer sitting between two comatose and famished chaperons, watching the dancers with indulgent eye, and generally presenting the appearance of one whose time for these follies is overpast. Then heads began to turn in another direction. People were asking one another who the little thing with the forget-me-nots might be, who danced like a fairy, and appeared to have made a "corner" in all Miss Gaymer's usual admirers. Had her appearance anything to do with Miss Gaymer's retirement? A case of pique--eh? Heads wagged sagely, and eyebrows were elevated. Poor Joan! Like all the great ones of the earth, she had her detractors. Sylvia herself was lost in the clouds by this time. When not engaged in obeying Joan's mandate to dance the soles of her slippers through, she was granting interviews to obsequious young men, who surged round in respectful platoons and hoped that, though disappointed on this occasion, they might have the pleasure at the County Bachelors' on Thursday fortnight. Never was there such a triumph. The girl, radiant and fluttering, smiled and blushed and wrote down hopeless hieroglyphics on the back of her programme, while Miss Joan Gaymer, the deposed, the eclipsed, sat contentedly by and realised to the full the truth of her own dictum that all Sylvia Tarrant wanted was a start. Later in the evening the watchful eye of Hughie Marrable detected the fact that Joan had disappeared from amid the concourse of matrons, and he speculated as to where she might be. He himself was enjoying a brief period of freedom, his partner for the moment having pleaded urgent private repairs and vanished to the regions above, and the idea had struck him that Joan might be going supperless. A brief scrutiny informed him that she was neither in the ballroom nor the supper-room. Then an inspiration seized him. Waiting for a comparatively quiet moment, he paid a hasty visit to the latter apartment, and having levied a contribution upon the side-table, slipped furtively round the big screen and down the dark passage. His instincts had not failed him. Miss Joan Gaymer was sitting peacefully upon the roll of red carpet. Her head was lying back against the wall, and the rays of the dusty electric light glinted upon her coppery hair. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them at Hughie's approach, blinking like a sleepy Dryad. "Hallo, Hughie!" she observed. "You nearly won a pair of gloves that time. Long evening, this!" Hughie began to deposit articles on the floor. "Supper," he observed briefly. He laid out a plate of mayonnaise, another of trifle, a bottle about half-full of champagne, and a tumbler.