For one moment he looked up and met her eyes, and she allowed hers to show that sphinxlike smile before she lowered the lids. Gerard Strobridge experienced an emotion. Läo was perhaps making him look a little ridiculous. She was overdoing her pleasure at seeing him. However, he was too old a hand at dalliance with women to allow himself to stay beside her for a moment after he felt this. So he made some forcible excuse about the post's going, and got up and left the room. He was completely at home, it was plain to be seen, at Blissington Court. Katherine smiled again to herself. After dinner there was to be a cinematograph show for Lady Garribardine's grandchildren, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy and girls of ten and seven, and they were dining punctually at eight. Katherine was to bring them into the hall when the entertainment began, having had them with her for dinner in the old schoolroom. She was not particularly fond of children, but she did her best to make them enjoy their meal. They were stupid, unattractive creatures with none of their grandmother's wit. They were to go on to their paternal relations for the New Year, and then with their governess and tutor were to sail to join their parents in the Antipodes. The "dressy blouse" had to do duty as evening attire on this night (the creation of Gladys' arranging must be kept for the grand occasion of the Christmas dinner in the dining-room) but Katherine had altered it a little, the wretched thing! and cut down the neck to make it more becoming. It looked quite suitable to her station in any case, she thought, as she caught sight of herself in the long glass in her room. She was beginning to take an interest in dress which surprised herself! She took a chair in the background, close to the staircase from which the servants were to be allowed to witness the show--Her whole demeanour was quiet and unremarkable--and no one paid any attention to her at all until the lights were turned up in the interval between one set of pictures and another, when Lady Garribardine called out to her: "Can you see from where you are, Miss Bush? The next thing ought to be very funny." Katherine had the kind of voice which people listen to, and one or two of the men glanced round at her when she answered with thanks that she had a capital view. And old Colonel Hawthorne said to a young guardsman friend of Miss Betty d'Estaire that, by Jove! Her Ladyship's secretary, or the children's governess, or whoever she was, had a pair of eyes worth looking at! Gerard Strobridge had found Läo charming again! He had dined well and partaken of his aunt's promised very best champagne, and he had indulged in some obviously subtle insinuations as to his further intentions in regard to their enjoyable friendship, whispered in her shell-pink ear while the lights were low. "Oh Gerard!--I won't allow you to!--Wait--not yet!" Mrs. Delemar had gasped prettily, expecting him to press the matter further.