“No,” he answered. “I’ve never set eyes on him before.” “I think he is the best-looking man I have ever seen,” said the woman. “No doubt--very good-looking, very good-looking!” said her host; “but on the wrong side of the line, I should say.” “The wrong side of the line? What do you mean?” “The shady side,” said Sir Seymour. And then he turned to speak to Lady Sellingworth. She had overheard the conversation, and felt suddenly angry with him. But she concealed her vexation and merely said to herself that men are as jealous of each other as women are jealous, that a man cannot bear to hear another man praised by a woman. Possibly--she was not sure of this--possibly Sir Seymour had noticed that she was interested in the stranger. He was very sharp in all matters connected with her. His affection increased his natural acuteness. She resolved to be very careful, even very deceptive. And she said: “Isn’t it odd how good looks, good manners and perfect clothes, even combined with charm, cannot conceal the fact that a man is an outsider?” “Ah, you agree with me!” Sir Seymour said, looking suddenly pleased. “That’s good! Men and women are seldom at one on such matters.” Lady Sellingworth shot a glance at the man discussed and felt absurdly like a traitor. Soon afterwards Sir Seymour’s lunch party broke up. In leaving the restaurant Lady Sellingworth passed so close to the young man that her gown almost brushed against him. He looked up at her, and this time the meaning of his glance was unmistakable. It said: “I want to know you. How can I get to know you?” She went home feeling almost excited. On the hall table of her house she found a note from Rupert Louth asking her whether she would help “little Bertha” by speaking up for her to a certain great dressmaker, who had apparently been informed of the Louths’ shaky finances. Louth’s obstinate reliance on her as a devoted friend of him and his disdainfully vulgar young wife began to irritate Lady Sellingworth almost beyond endurance. She took the letter up with her into the drawing-room, and sat down by the writing-table holding it in her hand. It had come at a dangerous moment. Louth’s blindness now exasperated her, although she had desperately done her best to close his eyes to the real nature of her feeling for him and to the unexpressed intentions she had formed concerning him and had been forced to abandon. It was maddening to be tacitly rejected as a possible wife and to be enthusiastically claimed as a self-sacrificing friend. Surely no woman born of woman could be expected to stand it. At that moment Lady Sellingworth began almost to hate Rupert Louth.