Whispers had gained him many things in life; a sudden drop of voice, a change of tone, an intimacy as it were of sympathy. But Esmé scarcely noticed it. She was too carelessly selfish to dream of the inconveniences of a lover, even if she had not been fond of Bertie. "Coming Saturday," he asked, "to the Bungalow?" "Oh, I suppose so. I've promised that child. Where am I going to? To buy a toy which has taken my fancy. Yes, you may come with me." Half an hour later one of the new crisp notes had gone for the emerald clasp, and the Ladies Susan and Hebe Ploddy, coming by chance into the shop, told all their friends that Captain Gore Helmsley had given it to that Mrs Carteret. CHAPTER III Esmé Carteret had chosen her own picture in the _tableaux vivants_ at the Leigh-Dilneys. It was called Joy. "I'm so happy," she had said merrily, "it will suit me." The Leigh-Dilneys gave entertainments in the name of charity, and since charity is all-powerful, and the pheasants at Leigh Grange were as flies in summer, everyone who was anyone in London gasped for air in the big drawing-room. Faint breaths of summer breeze eddying over scarlet geraniums and white marguerites were powerless to stir the heat generated by the crowd which packed itself in resignation on hired chairs and dreamt of getting away. Lady Delilah Leigh-Dilney looked as though she spent life trying to live down her name. A high-nosed, earnest woman, with an insatiable appetite for organized entertainment. Her bridge winnings went to support missions in distant China; an invitation to tea was certain to plunge the accepter into the dusty uncertainty of a bran pie at five shillings a dip, proceeds for something; or the obligatory buying of tickets for a vase or cushion which was too ugly ever to be used. Electric fans, Lady Delilah said, were noisy, useless and merely fashionable. Her guests sweltered on hard chairs as an overheated stage manager scrabbled the blue curtains of the miniature stage to and fro and wished he had never seen a tableaux. And Esmé was Joy. Merely herself, dressed in a cloud of rosy pink, her setting an ordinary room; her hands outstretched to, as it were, meet Life; her radiant face lighted by smiles; her burnished hair fluffed out softly. "Yet not so much Joy as self-satisfaction," murmured a panting cynic as he finished applauding. "For true Joy is a simple thing--its smile of the eyes and not of the teeth." Esmé had chosen the scene because she was really so happy. She seemed to have everything she wanted. Popular, young, helped by a dozen kindly friends, with Bertie as lover and husband satisfying every whim. The audience fled from sandwiches and thin coffee to amuse themselves after self-sacrifice. Esmé, in her pink gown, had danced the night away at two balls. She had not felt ill again; she put her secret fear away, hoping eagerly that she was mistaken. Went out next morning to shop. Was there not always something one wanted?