“No, it is not all the same,” said Dolff. “We can talk, I suppose; but not about what I wanted, Miss Summerhayes--about the ladies in white and the ladies in blue, perhaps, and who is flirting and who is not, and the man with the red hair, and all that. That is what ladies talk about between the dances; but that’s not my style, Miss Summerhayes.” “Is it not?” said Janet, “it seems very innocent talk.” “Innocent enough--meaning nothing,” said Dolff, with scorn; “like what we talk about in the evenings, when we’re all together, and you scarcely say anything at all. I hoped we might have had a little real conversation to-night.” “I am very sorry,” said Janet. “I fear it was my fault, but I forgot. I am very fond of dancing. Who is that lady that looked at you so significantly, Mr. Harwood?” “Oh,” said Dolff, with a groan, “I am booked to her for the next dance. And there are those infernal fellows--I beg your pardon, Miss Summerhayes--beginning to tune up!” CHAPTER XXVII. Charley Meredith walked home from St. John’s Wood to his chambers, which were in one of the streets about Berkeley Square, between two and three o’clock in the morning. It was in the week between Christmas and the New Year, when the fashionable parts of London were very quiet, but the other parts--the domestic quarters, so to speak, where people live all the year round--more lively than usual. Yet it is needless to say that he had on the whole a quiet walk; and it was a long one--a capital opportunity for thinking, which is an exercise that often goes on best when it is accompanied by physical movement, and the sensation of the fresh air in one’s face.