"How _do_ you think of all these clever things, Mr. Vaughan? I can't think how you do it!" "Yes, indeed, we'd all like to know that," said Captain Foster, the baby Guardsman, as Valentia called him. He spoke enviously. He was a perfectly beautiful blond, delightfully stupid, and had been longing for enough money to marry somebody ever since he was seventeen. "I'm sure I'd jolly soon write a play if I only knew how." "It's perfectly easy, really," said Vaughan; "it's just a knack." "Is it though?" "That's all." "How do you get the things taken?" "Oh, that's a mere fluke--a bit of luck," said Vaughan. Every one who heard this sighed with relief to think that was how he regarded it. Vaughan always used this exaggerated modesty as an armour against envy, for envy, as a rule, is of success rather than of merit. No one would have objected to his talent deserving recognition--only to his getting it. "Now what do you think of Miss Luscombe?" Valentia asked the dramatist. "I don't think of her. I never regard people on the stage as real people," Vaughan answered. "Don't you, really? Well, you ought to know. You have made a sort of corner in 'leading ladies'. What curious clothes she wears!" "Doesn't she? On the stage she dresses like an actress, and off the stage she doesn't dress like a lady. She's so extraordinarily vague," he said. "Yes; and yet I've heard that, though she's so dreamy and romantic, she's quite wonderfully practical, really. She never accepts an engagement unless she gets a large salary--and all that sort of thing." "I see. She lives in the clouds, but she insists on their having a silver lining," said Vaughan. "Who's the pink young man she's confiding in now?" "It's Mr. Rathbone. He likes theatres--at least he collects programmes and posters, I think. Besides, he's tattooed." "Oh, yes. That must be a great help in listening to Miss Luscombe. He's been trained to suffer." Miss Luscombe was talking rather loudly and most confidentially to Rathbone, who had an expression of willing--but agonised--martyrdom on his fair pink, clean-shaven features.