Tell her all about her! Wibberley gasped. He saw a difficulty in telling "all about her," the more as the general conversation was not brisk, and Joanna must bear a part. For an instant, indeed, his presence of mind failed him, and he cast an appalled glance round the table. Then he bent to his task. "Mrs. Galantine," he murmured sweetly, "pray--pray beware of becoming a potato!" The lady dropped her knife and fork with a clatter. "A potato, Mr. Wibberley? What do you mean?" "What I say," he answered simply. "You see my plate? It is a picture. You have there the manly beef, and the feminine peas, so young, so tender! And the potato! The potato is the confidante. It is insipid. Do you not agree with me?" "Bravo, Mr. Wibberley! But am I to apply your parable?" she spoke sharply, glancing across the table, with her fork uplifted, and a pea upon it. "Am I to be the potato?" "The choice is with you," he replied gallantly. "Shall it be the potato? or the peas?" Mrs. Burton Smith, seeing him absorbed in his companion, was puzzled. Look as she might at Joanna, she saw no sign of jealousy or self-consciousness. Joanna seemed to be getting on perfectly with her partner; to be enjoying herself to the full, and to be as much interested as any one at table. Mrs. Burton Smith sighed. She had the instinct of matchmaking. And she saw clearly now that there was nothing between the two; that if there had been any philandering at Rothley neither of the young people had put out a hand--or a heart--beyond recovery. But this success of Wibberley's with Mrs. Galantine had its consequences. After the ladies had withdrawn he grew a trifle presumptuous. By ill-luck, the Hon. Vereker May had reached that period of the evening when India--as seen through the glasses of his memory--was accustomed to put on its rosiest tints; and the two facing one another fell to debating on a subject of which the returned Civilian had seen much and thought little, and the private secretary had read more and thought not at all. They were therefore on a par as to information, and what the younger man lacked in obstinacy he made up in readiness. It was in vain the Nabob blustered, asserted, contradicted--finally grew sulky, silent, stertorous. Wibberley pushed his triumph, and soon paid dearly for it. It happened that he was the last to enter the drawing-room. The evening was chilly, and the ladies had grouped themselves about the fire, protected from assault, by a couple of gipsy-tables bearing shaded lamps. The incomers, one by one, passed through these outworks--all but Wibberley. He cast a glance of comic despair at Joanna, who was by the fireplace in the heart of the citadel; then, resigning himself to separation, he took a low chair by one of the tables, and began to turn over the books which lay on the latter. There were but half a dozen. He scanned them all, and then his eyes fell on a bracelet which lay beside them; a sketchy gold bracelet, with one big boss--Joanna's.