But when Mrs. Gaston had despatched her note, inviting Mr. Decourcy to dine with them that evening at six, and there came a response regretting that a previous engagement for dinner prevented his accepting her invitation, Mrs. Gaston was quite provoked about it, and when they were at dinner she confided her disappointment to her husband and his brother. “I called on him at the Arlington, this morning,” said Louis, “but he was out.” “Yes, we met him,” said Mrs. Gaston. “He was driving with Lord Waring.” Margaret felt a little throb of gratification, as her cousin made this announcement, of which she was deeply ashamed the next instant. “I am getting the most horrid ideas into my head,” she said to herself; “what a little snob I should have felt myself two months ago, to be filled with vulgar elation at the thought of Alan Decourcy being seen driving with a lord! It’s perfectly humiliating!” But all the same, the satisfaction remained. “I wonder where he is going to dine,” Mrs. Gaston went on, presently. “He will call, of course, in acknowledgment of my invitation, and when he does, Margaret, you must ask him.” The next morning he did call, and Mrs. Gaston and Margaret were at home to receive him. Margaret asked him, in the course of their talk, where he had dined the day before, and convicted herself a second time of snobbishness by the pleasure she felt in hearing him answer: “At the British Legation. The minister happens to be an old acquaintance, and Waring and I were great chums at one time. By-the-way, he was, for some reason, rather struck with you, Daisy. He was with me when I met you driving yesterday, you remember. I told him you were a pet cousin of mine, and it may have been on that account that he asked me to bring him to call upon you.” “I hope you will do so,” Mrs. Gaston said. “We should be glad to see him.” There was no under-bred eagerness in her tones as she said it, but Margaret suspected that there might be a little in her heart, and she was not sorry when Decourcy answered, merely: “Thank you; you’re very kind,” and then changed the subject by saying: “I picked up a little present for you, when I was in Naples, Margaret. I unpacked it this morning and will send it to you.” A few minutes after this he took leave, having made on both ladies an extremely good impression, which Mrs. Gaston owned to, in voluble phrases, and which Margaret concealed under a very calm exterior. A day or two later Alan called again, and brought with him Lord Waring, who proved to be a little dull. He was shy and constrained in manner and hampered by a certain gawkiness which Decourcy’s exquisite ease of breeding made the more apparent. In spite of all this, however, there was something rather distinguished in the young foreigner, a sincerity and simplicity that stamped him as a man of worth, and a commanding self-security that was as far removed from self-sufficiency as possible.