The other guests besides Valentia in yellow and Daphne in pink--both looking as fresh as daisies and as civilised as orchids--consisted of Lady Walmer, a smart, good-looking, commonplace woman, rather fatter than she wished to be, but very straight-fronted, straightforward, and sporting, with dark red hair and splendid jewels; a faded yet powerful beauty who had been admired in the eighties, but had only had real success since she turned forty-six. With her was her daughter, a girl who at the first glance looked eight feet high, but who really was not very much above the average length. She was a splendid athlete, and her talk was principally of hockey. She wore a very smart white dress and had a dark brown neck, pretty fair hair, and an entirely unaffected bonhomie that quite carried off the harshness of her want of style or charm--in fact it had a charm of its own. Besides, it was well known that her grandmother had left her an estate in the country and L 7000 a year, and that Lady Walmer was anxious to get her married. Hence Miss Walmer never wanted for partners at balls nor for attention anywhere, but--it was always for _le bon motif_. As Valentia said, she was the sort of girl (poor girl!) that one could only marry. Hereford Vaughan, who was an object of considerable curiosity to several of the guests on account of his phenomenal success in having eleven plays at the same time being performed in London, New York, Berlin, Paris, and every other European city, was, to those who did not know him before, an agreeable surprise. Heaven knows what exactly people expected of him; perhaps the men feared 'side' and the women that he would be overpowering after so many triumphs, but he was merely a rather pale, dark, and rather handsome young man. He behaved like anybody else, except that perhaps his manner was a little quieter than the average. Unless one was very observant (which one isn't), or unless one listened to what he said, he did not at first appear too alarmingly clever. He had one or two characteristics which must have at times led to misunderstandings. One was that whatever or whoever he looked at, his dark opaque eyes were so full of vivid expression that women often mistook for admiration what was often merely observation. For instance, when he glanced at Lady Walmer she at once became quite confused, and intensely flattered, nearly blushed and asked him to dinner. While, if she had but known, behind that dark glance was merely the thought, "So that's the woman that Royalty ... What extraordinary taste!" Hereford Vaughan, who was himself thirty-four, did not share in the modern taste for the battered as a charm in itself, though he could forgive it--or, indeed, anything else--if he were amused. Knowing that Miss Luscombe, hoping for a part, would be painfully nice to Vaughan, Harry had good-naturedly placed them as far apart as possible. Nevertheless she leaned across the table and said--