Fanny came back looking sorrowful. "He's gone," she said; "I never could have thought it!" "Why should he not go?" "Yes, but he went with the spoons and forks and things, and there was no girl at Soho." "Never trust those plausible gentlemen who look like Italian Counts," said James Hancock, not entirely displeased with the melodramatic news. "Whom _is_ one to trust?" asked Fanny, with the air of a woman whose life's illusion is shattered. James Hancock couldn't quite say. "Trust _me_," rose to his lips, but the sentiment was not uttered, partly because it would have been too previous, and partly because Hermann had just placed before him an enormous ice-cream. "You are not eating your ice!" "It's too hot--ah, um--I mean it's too cold," said Mr Hancock, waking from a moment's reverie. "That is to say, I scarcely ever eat ices." The fact that a sweet vanilla ice was simply food and drink to the gout was a dietetic truism he did not care to utter. "If," said Fanny, with the air of a mother speaking to her child, "if you don't eat your ice I will never take you shopping with me again. _Please_ eat it, I feel so greedy eating alone." Mr Hancock seized a spoon and attacked the formidable structure before him. "I hope I'll never grow old," sighed Miss Lambert, as Hermann approached them with a huge dish of fantastic-looking cakes--cakes crusted with sugar and chocolate, Moscow Gâteaux simply sodden with rum, and Merangues filled with cream rich as Devonshire could make it. "We must all grow old," said Hancock, staring with ghastly eyes at these atrocities. "But why do you specially fear age? Age has its beauties, it must come to us all." "I don't want to grow old," said his companion, "because then I would not care for sweets any more. Father says the older he grows the less he cares for sweets, and that every one loses their sweet tooth at fifty. I hope I'll never lose mine; if I do I'll--get a false one." Mr Hancock leisurely helped himself to one of the largest and sweetest-looking of the specimens of "Italian confectionery" before him; Fanny helped herself to its twin, and there was silence for a moment. It is strange that whilst a man may admit his age to a woman he cares for, by word of mouth, he will do much before he admits it by his actions. CHAPTER IV A MEETING