From out of one of the long windows, dressed in a sable coat, her small head tied up in a motor scarf, the Duchess of Breakwater appeared. She greeted them severely, and Lord Galorey hear her say under her breath to Dan: “You promised to be back to drive with me before dinner, Dan. Did you forget?” And as Galorey left the boy to make his peace, the first smile of amusement broke over his face. He felt that the duchess had between her and her capture of Dan Blair’s heart the elusive picture of some “nice girl”—not much perhaps, but it might be very hard to tear away the picture of the ideal that was ever before the blue eyes of this man who had a fortune to spend on her! CHAPTER II—THE DUCHESS APPROVES His attentions to the Duchess of Breakwater had not been so conspicuous or so absorbing as to prevent the eager mothers—who, true to her word, Lady Galorey had invited down—from laying siege to Dan Blair. Lady Galorey asked him: “Don’t you want to marry any one of these beauties, Dan?” And Blair, with his beautiful smile and what Lily called his inspired candor, answered: “Not on your life, Lady Galorey!” And she agreed, “I think myself you are too young.” “No,” Dan refuted, “you are wrong there. I shall marry as fast as I can.” His hostess was surprised. “Why, I thought you wanted your fling first.” And Dan, from his chair, in which, with a book, he had been sitting when Lady Galorey found him, answered cheerfully: “Oh, I don’t like being alone. I want to go about with some one. I should like a fling all right, but I want to fling with somebody as I go.” The lady of the house was not a philosopher nor an analyst. She had certain affairs of her own and was engrossed in them and lived in them. As far as Lady Galorey was concerned the rest of the world might go and hang itself as long as it didn’t do it at her gate-post. But Blair couldn’t leave any one indifferent to him very long, not unless one could be indifferent to a blaze of sunlight; one must either draw the blinds down or bask in its brightness. She laughed. “You’re perfectly delicious! You mean to say you want to be married at once and let your _wife_ fling around with you?” “Just that.” “How sweet of you, Dan! And you won’t marry one of these girls here?” “Don’t fill the bill, Lady Galorey.” “Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then?” “All off!” he assured her blithely, and rose, tall and straight and slender. The Duchess of Breakwater had come in, indeed she never failed to when there was any question of finding Blair.