It was on the occasion, a night or so later, of a gathering at dinner of exactly the few elect ones, whose power to find it delicious was the most highly developed, that she related it. It was a very little dinner—only four people. One was the long thin young man, with the good looking narrow face and dark eyes peering through a _pince nez_—the one who had said that Mrs. Gareth-Lawless “got her wondrous clothes from Hélène” but that he couldn’t. His name was Harrowby. Another was the Starling who was a Miss March who had, some years earlier, led the van of the girls who prostrated their relatives by becoming what was then called “emancipated”; the sign thereof being the demanding of latchkeys and the setting up of bachelor apartments. The relatives had astonishingly settled down, with the unmoved passage of time, and more modern emancipation had so far left latchkeys and bachelor apartments behind it that they began to seem almost old-fogeyish. Clara March, however, had progressed with her day. The third diner was an adored young actor with a low, veiled voice which, combining itself with almond eyes and a sentimental and emotional curve of cheek and chin, made the most commonplace “lines” sound yearningly impassioned. He was not impassioned at all—merely fond of his pleasures and comforts in a way which would end by his becoming stout. At present his figure was perfect—exactly the thing for the uniforms of royal persons of Ruritania and places of that ilk—and the name by which programmes presented him was Gerald Vesey. Feather’s house pleased him and she herself liked being spoken to in the veiled voice and gazed at by the almond eyes, as though insuperable obstacles alone prevented soul-stirring things from being said. That she knew this was not true did not interfere with her liking it. Besides he adored and understood her clothes. Over coffee in the drawing-room, Coombe joined them. He had not known of the little dinner and arrived just as Feather was on the point of beginning her story. “You are just in time,” she greeted him, “I was going to tell them something to make them laugh.” “Will it make me laugh?” he inquired. “It ought to. Robin is in love. She is five years old and she has been deserted, and Andrews came to tell me that she can neither eat nor sleep. The doctor says she has had a shock.” Coombe did not join in the ripple of amused laughter but, as he took his cup of coffee, he looked interested. Harrowby was interested too. His dark eyes quite gleamed. “I suppose she is in bed by now,” he said. “If it were not so late, I should beg you to have her brought down so that we might have a look at her. I’m by way of taking a psychological interest.” “I’m psychological myself,” said the Starling. “But what do you mean, Feather? Are you in earnest?”