There was a lady too many at dinner--a man short! Jenny could have avoided this blot on her arrangements by eliminating Chat--and poor Chat was quite accustomed to being eliminated. But she chose not to adopt this course. I rather think that she liked to feel herself a bit of a martyr in the matter, but possibly she was also minded to make a little demonstration of her submission, to let them guess that Octon had been coming and that she had acted on their orders with merciless promptitude. In other respects the party was one of her most successful. Great as was the strain which she had been through in the afternoon, she herself was gay and sparkling. And how they petted her! Lady Aspenick might naturally have looked to be the heroine of the occasion--nor had she any reason to complain of a lack of interest in her story (I had to complain of a great deal too much interest in mine)--but it was for Jenny that the highest honors were reserved; the most joy was over the one sinner that repented. Fillingford, of course, took her in to dinner. It was not in the man to pay what are called "marked attentions" before the eyes of others, but his manner to her was characterized by a pronounced friendliness and deference; he seemed to be trying to atone for the coercion which he had been compelled to exert earlier in the day. He did not fall into the mistake of treating her acquiescence as a trifle or the case as merely that of "cutting a cad," to use Aspenick's curtly contemptuous phrase. He raised her action to the rank of an obligation conferred on her neighbors and especially on himself. He was man of the world enough to convey this impression without departing too far from the habitual reserve of his demeanor. Lady Aspenick looked at the pair through her eyeglasses; we had at last exhausted the incident of the morning--though we had not settled the precise degree of accidentality which attached to the collision between her whip and Octon's face; under a veiled cross-examination she had become rather vague about it--that may weigh a little in Octon's favor. "It's a long while since I've seen Lord Fillingford so lively," she remarked. "He seems to get on so well with Miss Driver. As a rule, you know, we women despair of him." "Has he such a bad character among you as that?" "He seemed to have given himself up to being old long before he need. He's only forty-three, I think." She laughed. "There, in my heart I believe I'm matchmaking, like a true woman!" "Yes, I believe you are. Well, these speculations are always interesting." "We're beginning to make them in the neighborhood, I can tell you, Mr. Austin." "And--knowing the neighborhood--I can believe you, Lady Aspenick." "You've no special information?" she asked, laughing. "It would make me so important!" "Oh, you're important enough already--after this morning. And I know nothing--absolutely nothing." "You mean to say Miss Driver doesn't tell you----?"