"I suppose it wouldn't do just to sort of please Harry by marrying Van, and then seeing that silly boy now and then. You'd so soon get tired of him--but, no! that wouldn't be right. Forget that I said it--I don't mean it." "I couldn't stand Van at all," said Daphne definitely, "whether I saw Cyril or not." "Then you shan't be bothered with him. But can't you give up Cyril? I know I'm right about it. It isn't only the hard-upness and the impossibility--of course, I know he's got relations and all that--but, it's he himself. You'll get bored with him, too, in a different way." "I like him so much _now_," pleaded Daphne. Romer came in and Valentia merely told him at great length every word of the foregoing conversation with lavish comments by herself. Secretly Romer was bitterly disappointed when he realised that the possibility of his being left alone with his wife was more remote, but of course he agreed with Valentia, as she changed her mind a dozen times on the subject, and as usual the conversation ended in a telephone message to Harry to come round at once. CHAPTER VIII IN FANCY DRESS Van Buren had had many pleasures, many gratifications since he had been in London; his dreams--the dreams inspired by Du Maurier's drawings when he was a little boy--had been very nearly realised. Perhaps the greatest triumph that he had had yet was the evening of the Artists' Fancy Ball. He had succeeded in making up a party to go in costume. He was always making up parties, and he had for many years been obsessed by a longing to dress up. Harry, in mockery of his passion for everything English, had advised him to go as an Ancient Briton, with a coat of blue paint. Scorning such ribald chaff, he had ordered a magnificent costume of chain armour. Greatly to his satisfaction he had persuaded Hereford Vaughan to go as Shakespeare, Valentia and Daphne respectively as Portia in scarlet and Rosalind in green. A large party were to dine at Van Buren's rooms before the ball. Fancy dress has the effect of bringing out odd, unexpected little characteristics in people. For example, Harry, good-looking and a dandy, quite a romantic type, hated dressing up, and cared nothing whatever about his costume; while Romer, the sober and serious, enjoyed it immensely, and appeared to think his appearance of the utmost importance--almost a matter of life and death. The women were far less self-conscious in costume than the men, and cared far less how they looked, probably because women are always more or less in fancy dress, and it was not so much of a novelty to them. Valentia had pointed out that Shakespeare, to be quite correct, should wear ear-rings; so Vaughan called at her house on the way to Van Buren's, as she had promised to lend him some. "He won't know how to put them on," said Daphne, drawing on her long boots. "Probably he hasn't had his ears pierced; you must go and screw them on for him."