Of course nine girls out of ten never notice a man’s ordinary clothes. Evening-dress they recognize; and, of course, flannels, because those are white, and allow the man (especially after a hard game) to look a decent shape if he is one. Anything else is lost on them. But I’m the tenth girl. As Major Montresor once said, when he was huffy with me for telling him his new Norfolk jacket was “too undergraduatey” for him, “Little Monica notices like a valet!” Sydney’s clothes one couldn’t _help_ noticing; he’s so well-turned-out, but never in a stereotyped style; in fact, he refuses to be dressed, as he calls it, “through a stencil.” I’m sure he’d rather put on a false nose and walk down St. James’s Street in it than appear in that hideous conventional “rig” of the Governor’s. To-day, for the Carlton, Sydney wore grey of such an exquisite soft stuff that it was hard to believe it came from any ordinary man’s tailor; the tie below his bare throat was dove-colour shot with heliotrope, and his silk socks and the line in his shirt with its soft collar matched it exactly. There was one dark Russian violet in his button-hole. All these details were familiar to me before Sydney so much as cast a glance at our table. Then, in a lull, when I refused coffee, he seemed to prick up his ears. With a quick turn from the girl in blue velvet, he looked straight across and saw me at last. “_Monica——!_” I heard the quick, delighted, recognizing exclamation break from my old admirer’s lips. (I _know_ he admires me, so why not say so?) For the life of me, I couldn’t help raising my eyes and meeting his own fixed upon me. He half rose. Then his glance fell upon my companion. Mr. Waters was then in the act of putting money down upon the little tray the waiter handed. And then I saw the expression of eager delight on Sydney’s dark, rather dreamy-looking, face give place to a hurt surprise, as he sat back again in his chair. At the same moment Lady Vandeleur turned quickly, fixing her own gaze upon our table. Immediately the gaze became a blank stare, while her exquisitely-pencilled eyebrows rose almost to the edge of her costly “transformation.” She’d recognized me, of course. But stony displeasure and outraged convention gleamed in the eyes that she instantly averted. You see, in her world a girl of my age is not supposed to lunch at the Carlton without a chaperon of some sort, and with an unspecified young man. Up to this occasion I, Colonel Trant’s daughter, had been of that world, of those conventions. The Vandeleurs were evidently shocked at the lapse. Dear old Sydney, old-fashionedly chivalrous towards women, was also old-fashionedly strict; and his mother—well! she was merely glad of the excuse to cut me. Under the circumstances I need not have minded. But one is not consistent. I minded horribly the idea of what they might be thinking about me—that I had become horrid, forward, fast.