He took his dismissal placidly, as men do in a society where they cannot claim the undivided attention of at least one woman. Besides, Gwen Boynton's chief charm lay in the impossibility of forgetting that--provided she did not wish to do something else--she would be quite as gracious to the person who cut into your place as she had been to you. Furthermore that he was sure to hold as good a hand, and know the game as well as you did; for Mrs. Boynton, as Rose Tweedie had remarked, admitted no inferior players to her table. Seen now in the full light of the coffee-room she showed slight and graceful in the soft grey draperies which she wore as half mourning for the late Mr. Boynton--a perfectly unexceptional man who, on the verge of retirement, had lost all the savings of a long bachelorhood in one unfortunate venture, and had died of the disappointment. Beyond a perfectly lovely mouth and the faultless curves of chin and throat, there was nothing remarkable in her face; nothing at least to account for her remarkable charm. That, however, was indubitable; even Lewis Gordon, sipping his coffee outside the circle which gathered round her quickly, kept his eyes upon her. So he noticed hers turn more than once to Dan Fitzgerald, who stood at the table waiting to replace Rose Tweedie's tumbler of lemonade. 'She is afraid of him,' he thought. 'I wonder why? Perhaps she hasn't got over her fancy either; that is the only thing I can think of likely to create a difficulty.' Then he went off to button-hole another Secretary about business, and forgot even Gwen Boynton. Yet, if half an hour afterwards he had by chance wandered into that portion of the gardens devoted to zoology he would have seen something to confirm his suggestion. For the two figures leaning over the iron rail surrounding the ornamental water were those of Mrs. Boynton and Dan Fitzgerald. The moon shone on the water; the clumps of bamboo and plantains on the central island showed softly dark; masses of feathery tamarisk trees and the sweeping curves of a sandhill or two beyond the garden shut out the world. Otherwise it was not a suitable spot for sentimental interviews, by reason of the ducks and geese, whose sleepy gabblings and quackings were apt to come in unsympathetic chorus to lovers' talk, while the adjutants, standing in pairs side by side, their heads under their wings, were over-suggestive of Darby and Joan. The conversation between these two, however, was sufficiently sensible to stand the test of their surroundings. 'It is really absurd,' she said in (for her) quite a querulous voice. 'I accept a pleasant invitation to make myself useful to the Tweedies, who have always been most kind to me,--and my cousin. And why every one should jump to the conclusion that I am going to marry a man who is almost old enough to be my father I cannot imagine. Really the world is too idiotic.'