Lucy encouraged her beloved. "It's very neat indeed," she said, and her grey eyes glowed, or seemed to glow. "It's what we call an omen at school," said Lancelot. "It means--oh, well, it means lots of things, like you're bound to have it, and it's bound to be a frightful success, or an utter failure, or something of that kind." He thought about it. Developments crowded upon him. "I say, Mamma--" all this was at breakfast, Macartney shrouding himself in the _Morning Post_: "Yes, Lancelot?" "It would be awfully good, awfully ingenious and all that, if one of the people was _twice_ twelve and a half." She agreed. "Yes, I should like that. Very likely one of them is." Lancelot looked extremely serious. "Not Mr. Urquhart?" he said. "No," said Lucy, "I am sure Mr. Urquhart is older than that. But there's Margery Dacre. She might do." Lancelot had his own ideas as to whether women counted or not, in omens, but was too polite to express them. "Is she twenty-five, do you think? She's rather thin." Lucy exploded, and had to kiss the unconscious humourist. "Do you think we grow fatter as we grow older? Then you must think me immense, because I'm much more than twenty-five," she said. Here was a vital matter. It is impossible to do justice to Lancelot's seriousness, on the edge of truth. "How much more are you, really?" he asked her, trembling for the answer. She looked heavenly pretty, with her drawn-back head and merry eyes. She was a dark-haired woman with a tender smile; but her eyes were her strong feature--of an intensely blue-grey iris, ringed with black. Poising to tantalise him, adoring the fun of it, suddenly she melted, leaned until her cheek touched his, and whispered the dreadful truth--"_Thirty-one_." I wish I could do justice to his struggle, politeness tussling with pity for a fall, but tripping it up, and rising to the proper lightness of touch. "Are you really thirty-one? Oh, well, that's nothing." It was gallantly done. She kissed him again, and Lancelot changed the subject. "There's Mr. Lingen, isn't there?" he asked, adding, "He's always here." "Much more than twenty-five," said his mother, very much aware of Mr. Lingen's many appearances in Onslow Square. She made one more attempt at her husband, wishing, as she always did wish, to draw him into the company. It was not too successful. "Lingen? Oh, a stripling," he said lightly and rustled the _Morning Post_ like an aspen tree. "Father always talks as if he was a hundred himself," said Lancelot, who was not afraid of him. He had to be content with Miss Dacre after all. The others--the Judge and Lady Bliss, Aunt Mabel and Uncle Corbet, the Worthingtons, were out of the question. As for Miss Bacchus--oh, Miss Bacchus was, _at least_, five hundred, said Lancelot, and wished to add up all the ages to see if they came to a multiple of twelve and a half.