"I've been like that twice before," she said; "it's the racket. Bertie, I don't feel up to luncheon now, and I like to be hungry when I lunch with Denise. Oh, thank you, dear." For he brought smelling-salts, holding the fragrant, pungent, scented stuff to her nostrils. He was genuinely anxious. "It's nothing," she said lightly; "something disagreed with me." "Lunching with Denise?" He lighted his pipe. Carteret was not a cigarette-smoker. "Ever see Blakeney with her now, girlie?" "No-o," she said reluctantly. "H'm! I hear they're not too good pals. Denise has been playing the fool with young Jerry Roche--the 'wily fish' as they call him. She'd better not go too far with Cyril Blakeney. I was at school with him--came just when he left. But I knew his brother there also. I tell you, Esmé, they're a bad lot to vex." Esmé shook her head thoughtfully. "Hope Jimmie Helmsley won't be at luncheon," Carteret went on. "Steer clear of him, old dear." "I'm lunching with him on Saturday, Bert." "Well, don't again. He's a beast. Of course there's no fear of you, but there was the Grange Stukeley girl, poor soul, married off to a parson cousin; and Lettice Greene, and--oh, heaps of his victims." There are some women who create trust. The dazzle about Esmé was not one of warmth. It was cold as she was selfish. Her husband, without realizing this, yet knew that he might trust her implicitly, that beyond mere careless flirtation nothing amused her. "Well, good-bye, Esmé. I must go to do a few things which don't want doing, even as this morning I paraded unwilling youths at seven." Carteret strolled out. Esmé picked up the salts bottle, sniffing at it. She rang for a trim, superior maid to take away, going back herself to the pretty drawing-room to write a few notes. "I'm feeling rotten," wrote Esmé to a girl friend, "slack and seedy--" and then she jumped up, crying out aloud. "Not that! Not that! Not the end of their dual in the treble. Not the real cares of life forced on her. Oh, it could not be--it could not!" Esmé raged round the room, crying hysterically, fighting off an imaginary enemy with her hands. It would mean a move from the little expensive flat. Doctors, nurses, extra maids swallowing their income. "It can't be!" she stormed. "I'm mad!" and rushed off to dress. She looked hungrily at her slim figure in her glass, watched her maid fasten hooks and buttons until the perfectly-cut early summer gown seemed to cling to the slender figure. There was that, too--a figure spoilt. Dowdy, disfiguring clothes, and fear, the fear of the inevitable. She was counting, calculating as the maid finished fastening her dress, brought her a cloudy feather wrap, deep brown over the creamy gown, long white gloves, a scented handkerchief, a bunch of deep pink roses.