She assented, and they slowly mounted the staircase together. Some of the evening's guests lounging about in the hall and loitering near the ballroom door, watched them go, and exchanged significant glances. One tall woman with black eyes and a viperish mouth, who commanded a certain exclusive "set" by virtue of being the wife of a dissolute Earl whose house was used as a common gambling resort, found out Mrs. Sorrel sitting among a group of female gossips in a corner, and laid a patronising hand upon her shoulder. "_Do_ tell me!" she softly breathed. "_Is_ it a case?" Mrs. Sorrel began to flutter immediately. "_Dearest_ Lady Larford! What _do_ you mean!" "Surely you know!" And the wide mouth of her ladyship grew still wider, and the black eyes more steely. "Will Lucy get him, do you think?" Mrs. Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair. Other people were listening. "Really," she mumbled nervously--"really, _dear_ Lady Larford!--you put things so _very_ plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like her father----" Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin. "Oh, that's very safe!" she said. "The 'father' business works very well when sufficient cash is put in with it. I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between old men and young girls--absolutely _perfect_! One is bound to be happy with heaps of money!" And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her skirts exhaling an odour of civet-cat as she moved. Mrs. Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladyship's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, "the new girl who was presented at Court last night," was having a "try" for the Helmsley millions; and that if the "try" was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same titled "leader" of a section of the aristocratic gambling set. For there has never been anything born under the sun crueller than a twentieth-century woman of fashion to her own sex--except perhaps a starving hyaena tearing asunder its living prey. Meanwhile, David Helmsley and his young companion had reached the drawing-room, which they found quite unoccupied. The window-balcony, festooned with rose-silk draperies and flowers, and sparkling with tiny electric lamps, offered itself as an inviting retreat for a quiet chat, and within it they seated themselves, Helmsley rather wearily, and Lucy Sorrel with the queenly air and dainty rustle of soft garments habitual to the movements of a well-dressed woman. "I have not thanked you half enough," she began, "for all the delightful things you have done for my birthday----" "Pray spare me!" he interrupted, with a deprecatory gesture--"I would rather you said nothing."