And all the time that Amber Severn was pretending to give all attention to the description of the polo match of the day before which was given to her by the young man next to her, she was looking across the table at Ernest Clifton wondering if he was wishing that, instead of being by the side of Josephine’s mother, he were by the side of Josephine herself. She also looked down the table to where Josephine was sitting and wondered if she was wishing that she were by the side of Ernest Clifton instead of that rather abrupt Mr. Pierce Winwood. She was of the opinion, being something of a philosopher with more than the average philosopher’s experience, that society is usually made up of people who are evermore longing to be by the side of other people; and that what is meant by good manners is trying to appear content with the people who have been placed beside you. Josephine certainly had good manners; she seemed to be more than content with Mr. Winwood. She seemed actually to be interested in his conversation--nay absorbed; and as for Ernest Clifton--well, Amber knew enough of men and women to be well aware of the fact that if Ernest Clifton was full of longing to be by the side of Josephine his first impulse would be to make himself as agreeable as possible to Josephine’s mother. And this was just what Ernest Clifton was doing. He was one of those clever people who are actually better pleased to have a chance of being agreeable to the mother than to the daughter, knowing that the mother may be captured by the art of being agreeable, whereas the daughter is rarely influenced by this rarest of the arts. And then Amber, somewhat to her own surprise, ceased to give any attention to the people at the other side of the table or at the other end of the table, for she found herself constrained to give all her attention to Lord Lullworth, and his polo. She found that he had at his command a phraseology which without being highly scientific was extremely picturesque, and besides that, he hated Mr. Cupar. Mr. Cupar was the novelist who wrote with the shriek of a street preacher, and was for one season widely discussed. A common enemy constitutes a bond of friendship far more enduring than any other the wit of man, money, or woman, can devise; so that after Lord Lullworth had pointed out to her some of the ridiculous mistakes which Mr. Cupar had made with all the ostentation of a great teacher--mistakes about horses that a child would never have fallen into, and mistakes about the usages of society that no one who had ever seen anything decent would ever fall into--she found herself more than interested in Lord Lull-worth, and by no means felt inclined to share Guy Overton’s regret that he, Guy Overton, had not been beside her.