It fell to my lot to take her in to dinner, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. She was quite unconscious amongst these great folk, and unaffectedly joyous. I almost fancied that Lady Gascoyne looked at me once or twice with the faintest sign of surprise. I sincerely hoped she would not inform Miss Lane of the fact that I was engaged, although it was more than probable. Esther Lane was one of those women who are, to a certain extent, lacking in the natural defences of their sex as a result of their own honesty and simplicity. That she was prepared to be interested in me was obvious, and I made the most of my time. After dinner she played to us. It was not a brilliant performance, but she was accurate and had feeling, and she touched the keys wooingly and caressingly, making the piano sing, a gift rare even among some so-called finished performers. If people cannot make instruments sing they had better leave them alone. Afterwards I played and sang, and she declared herself ashamed of her own performance. Music had the advantage of giving us an excuse for remaining at the piano together, and later, when everybody else settled down to cards some way off, we were left trying over one song after the other. When I murmured that it seemed as if we had known each other all our lives she blushed. Later, in the smoking-room, Sir Cheveley said he was quite astonished to find how pretty she was. It was a fact which he declared had grown on him gradually. The next morning I returned to town, but I had made such good use of my time that I carried with me an invitation to return in a fortnight, and it was Lord Gascoyne who brought it me from his wife. He had made quite a friend of me. It was not probable that he had ever had a friend with anything of the bizarre about him before. Chapter XXII