A complete silence had fallen on the room. Every woman in it was counting the pleats of Sylvia's skirt and the amount of material in it. Valentine Wannop knew that because she was doing it herself. If one had that amount of material and that number of pleats one's skirt might hang like that. . . . For it was extraordinary: it fitted close round the hips, and gave an effect of length and swing--yet it did not descend as low as the ankles. It was, no doubt, the amount of material that did that, like the Highlander's kilt that takes twelve yards to make. And from the silence Valentine could tell that every woman and most of the men--if they didn't know that this was Mrs. Christopher Tietjens--knew that this was a personage of _Illustrated Weekly_, as who should say of county family, rank. Little Mrs. Swan, lately married, actually got up, crossed the room and sat down beside her bridegroom. It was a movement with which Valentine could sympathise. And Sylvia, having just faintly greeted Mrs. Duchemin, and completely ignored the celebrity in the arm-chair--in spite of the fact that Mrs. Duchemin had tried half-heartedly to effect an introduction--stood still, looking round her. She gave the effect of a lady in a nurseryman's hot-house considering what flower should interest her, collectedly ignoring the nurserymen who bowed round her. She had just dropped her eyelashes, twice, in recognition of two staff officers with a good deal of scarlet streak about them who were tentatively rising from their chairs. The staff officers who came to the Macmasters were not of the first vintages; still they had the labels and passed as such. Valentine was by that time beside her mother, who had been standing all alone between two windows. She had dispossessed, in hot indignation, a stout musical critic of his chair and had sat her mother in it. And, just as Mrs. Duchemin's deep voice sounded, yet a little waveringly: "Valentine . . . a cup of tea for . . ." Valentine was carrying a cup of tea to her mother. Her indignation had conquered her despairing jealousy, if you could call it jealousy. For what was the good of living or loving when Tietjens had beside him, for ever, the radiant, kind and gracious perfection. On the other hand, of her two deep passions, the second was for her mother.