"It's Cyrrie!" said Denise. "Cyrrie and his old Aunt Grace. He asked me to have her at Grosvenor Square to-day, and I told him a fib to escape." Denise fidgeted uneasily, her colour changing. "I told one fib," she said, "now it will take a dozen more to make it credible." "The fib is a mental fly," said Jimmie, laughing; "he's grown large quickly. Cheer up, Milady, don't look tragic." The big man nodded to his wife with a careless smile. It is an Englishman's need to be outwardly pleasant, to glaze a volcano with a laugh--in public. "He hasn't scolded me enough lately," said Denise, grimly. "And the nature of husbands being to scold, it makes me nervous." She watched Cyrrie narrowly. "Aunt Grace is having boiled chicken, specially ordered for her; she will finish up with stewed fruit and rice. It makes it so difficult when she comes. My cook is uncertain as to boiling chickens plainly." Lady Blakeney tried to fling off her depression, to do her duty as hostess. She muttered something sharply to Lord Gerald, she talked a little too fast, a little too gaily. Esmé would flash smiles, planning some future gaiety, forget for a moment, and then, across her happiness, a cloud rose looming, threatening. Oh! it could not be! It must not be! There were so many things she meant to do. Bertie's appointment was up; he was going to South Africa until they got something else, or his other battalion came to Aldershot. Exchanges could always be managed. And Esmé was due at Trouville in August; she was going on to Scotland; she had been asked to Cheshire to hunt for two months. It must not be! Once, in a spasm of fear, she clenched her hand, crushing her glass in her fingers, spilling her champagne. Esmé drank champagne on a hot May day because it looked well to see it there, because it brightened her wits, made pleasure keener. She liked expensive dishes, ordering them recklessly when she was asked out, taking the best of everything. She was never tired, never knew sleeplessness; could dance until four and be out riding next morning, with her bright colour undimmed. Perfect health makes perfect temper. Esmé was an unruffled companion, provided she got her own way. Down in the country, without amusement, she would have fretted, beaten against bars of dulness. "Oh, Mrs Carteret!" she heard Jimmie exclaim as the amber liquid vanished, as the broken glass tinkled together on the cloth. "What dream moved you?" he whispered, bending close. "What, lady fair?" A man who could throw meaning into his lightest word, here it was implied, had she thought of hidden things; the eyes burning into hers expressed that she had thought of him. Though every road in the map of love was known to Jimmie Gore Helmsley, he hinted at unknown turns, at heights unclimbed to each fresh companion he took by the route, knowing how women love mystery and hate the flat, soft paths they can see too well. "Of what?" he whispered. "If I dared to think. It would make Friday--"