“This modern way of dancing with one man the whole evening seems to me very odd. I shouldn’t care about it for any of my own flock.” “But you know, Mumma, we don’t know any men who are in the least likely to ask us to dance with them for the whole evening,” observed Dolly Kendal very honestly. “And one never does go to any dance, except perhaps at Christmas-- struggling along down here,” added Aileen. I thought Mumma looked rather disconcerted at so much candor, but she only said, “Well, well,” and put up her glasses to scrutinize Bill and Mrs. Harter more effectively. Their performance was well worth watching, artistically speaking, although it was undoubtedly not that aspect of the case which presented itself to those people who appeared unable to take their eyes off them. Harter himself was among these. He stood near one of the windows and never stirred. Claire asked if he cared to dance and he said, “No thanks, Lady Flower. I am not a dancing man.” Later on I saw Sallie go up to him. I think that she actually asked him to dance, probably out of pure curiosity, but if so, he declined the privilege. Sallie, looking very pretty, stayed beside him, talking and laughing, for a few moments, but I did not once see Harter smile or make any response except of the shortest and most formal kind. He had a peculiar way of not looking at the person to whom he was--presumably--listening, and all the while that Sallie was with him he looked at Bill Patch and at his wife. “Well, if you ask me, that little worm Harter will be filing his petition within a month,” said Mrs. Leeds cheerfully. “If I were in his shoes, I’d take that woman home and thrash her,” charitably remarked old Carey, to whom she had spoken. “She was pretty hot stuff, even in Egypt.” “She! I’m not thinking about her. I’m thinking about a decent young fellow like Patch. She’s out to make a fool of that lad and, by Jove, she’s succeeding. He’s bewitched.” “Men always run after that sort of woman. They were all after her in Cairo. Hector would have been as bad as any of them if I hadn’t put my foot down.” Mrs. Leeds looked up at her husband and laughed most good-naturedly. It was quite evident that to her the whole thing was a joke, and a joke of the type that most appealed to her. Where Lady Annabel saw sin she saw only vulgarity, and vulgarity amused her. I am reminded that Lady Annabel was particularly gracious that evening. It was quite characteristic of her that once she had given us her advice and we had tacitly refused to take it, she should avoid any slightest hint of the “I-told-you-so” attitude that really was open to her. She certainly looked at those two--but then so did everybody. She never said a word. Lady Annabel has a wonderfully good memory both for names and for faces. (“I have heard it called a royal attribute,” she sometimes says smilingly.)