"Oh, some rich pork-packing or diamond-sweating uncle has cropped up in Australia, or America, or one of those places," suggested the captain, "and Billy's got wind of it in good time. Billy knows his way about." We agreed that some such explanation was needed, though in all other respects Gerty Lovell was just the girl that Reason (not always consulted on these occasions) might herself have chosen for "Blase Billy's" mate. The sunlight was not too kind to her, but at evening parties, where the lighting has been well considered, I have seen her look quite girlish. At her best she was not beautiful, but at her worst there was about her an air of breeding and distinction that always saved her from being passed over, and she dressed to perfection. In character she was the typical society woman: always charming, generally insincere. She went to Kensington for her religion and to Mayfair for her morals; accepted her literature from Mudie's and her art from the Grosvenor Gallery; and could and would gabble philanthropy, philosophy, and politics with equal fluency at every five-o'clock tea-table she visited. Her ideas could always be guaranteed as the very latest, and her opinion as that of the person to whom she was talking. Asked by a famous novelist one afternoon, at the Pioneer Club, to give him some idea of her, little Mrs. Bund, the painter's wife, had remained for a few moments with her pretty lips pursed, and had then said: "She is a woman to whom life could bring nothing more fully satisfying than a dinner invitation from a duchess, and whose nature would be incapable of sustaining deeper suffering than that caused by an ill-fitting costume." At the time I should have said the epigram was as true as it was cruel, but I suppose we none of us quite know each other. I congratulated "Blase Billy," or to drop his Club nickname and give him the full benefit of his social label, "The Hon. William Cecil Wychwood Stanley Drayton," on the occasion of our next meeting, which happened upon the steps of the Savoy Restaurant, and I thought--unless a quiver of the electric light deceived me--that he blushed. "Charming girl," I said. "You're a lucky dog, Billy." It was the phrase that custom demands upon such occasions, and it came of its own accord to my tongue without costing me the trouble of composition, but he seized upon it as though it had been a gem of friendly sincerity. "You will like her even more when you know her better," he said. "She is so different from the usual woman that one meets. Come and see her to- morrow afternoon, she will be so pleased. Go about four, I will tell her to expect you."