Whenever there was an important social function, Lady Tanagra Bowen was sure to be there, and it was equally certain that the photographers of the illustrated and society papers would so manoeuvre that she came into the particular group, or groups, they were taking. The seventh Marquess of Meyfield was an enthusiastic collector of Tanagra figurines and, overruling his lady's protestations, he had determined to call his first and only daughter Tanagra. Lady Meyfield had begged for a second name; but the Marquess had been resolute. "Tanagra I will have her christened and Tanagra I will have her called," he had said with a smile that, if it mitigated the sternness of his expression, did not in my way undermine his determination. Lady Meyfield knew her lord, and also that her only chance of ruling him was by showing unfailing tact. She therefore bowed to his decision. "Poor child!" she had remarked as she looked down at the frail little mite in the hollow of her arm, "you're certainly going to be made ridiculous; but I've done my best," and Lord Meyfield had come across the room and kissed his wife with the remark, "There you're wrong, my dear, it's going to help to make her a great success. Imagine, the Lady Tanagra Bowen; why it would make a celebrity of the most commonplace female," whereat they had both smiled. As a child Lady Tanagra had been teased unmercifully about her name, so much so that she had almost hated it; but later when she had come to love the figurines that were so much part of her father's life, she had learned, not only to respect, but to be proud of the name. To her friends and intimates she was always Tan, to the less intimate Lady Tan, and to the world at large Lady Tanagra Bowen. She had once found the name extremely useful, when in process of being proposed to by an undesirable of the name of Black. "It's no good," she had said, "I could never marry you, no matter what the state of my feelings. Think how ridiculous we should both be, everybody would call us Black and Tan. Ugh! it sounds like a whisky as well as a dog." Whereat Mr. Black had laughed and they remained friends, which was a great tribute to Lady Tanagra. Exquisitely pretty, sympathetic, witty, human! Lady Tanagra Bowen was a favourite wherever she went. She seemed incapable of making enemies even amongst her own sex. Her taste in dress was as unerring as in literature and art. Everything she did or said was without effort. She had been proposed to by "half the eligibles and all the ineligibles in London," as Bowen phrased it; but she declared she would never marry until Peter married, and had thus got somebody else to mother him. At a quarter-past one when Bowen left the War Office, he found Lady Tanagra waiting in her car outside. "Hullo, Tan!" he cried, "what a brainy idea, picking up the poor, tired warrior." "It'll save you a taxi, Peter. I'll tell you what to do with the shilling as we go along."