Savile followed his host up, laughing vaguely, and said when he saw Sylvia, in a rather marked way-- "Ah! You didn't believe me when I told you I'd come and fetch you! But, you see, here I am." "Sweet of you, dear," said Sylvia. "And a fine place it is--well worth coming to see, isn't it?" said Frank, laughing a great deal. "Well, we'd better be off. I kept the cab because of dining at Aunt William's to-night. You know, Sylvia, we're late." "Oh, yes, dear. I'd almost given you up." As they went to the door, Savile suddenly turned round, and having decided a debate in his mind, said-- "I know all about it. I congratulate you, Woodville. But we'll keep it dark a bit yet, eh?" Savile thought his knowing of the engagement made it more conventional. The brother and sister drove off. Sylvia was silent. Savile did not say a single word until they nearly reached home. Then he remarked casually-- "As I found out where you'd gone, I thought it would sort of look better, eh, for me to fetch you? Didn't mean to be a bore or anything." "Oh, Savile dear, _thank_ you! I'll never----" "Yes; it's not going to happen again. Go and dress, old girl. Wear your pink. Motor'll be round in half an hour; heaps of time. I'm going too, you know--at Aunt William's." CHAPTER XIII AT MRS. OGILVIE'S "I know what's the matter with you, Vera," said Felicity decidedly, as she sat down in her friend's flat in Cadogan Place. "It's that you haven't got the personal note!" "I?" said Vera indignantly. Mrs. Ogilvie was a very pretty dark woman of about thirty, who minimised her good looks and added to her apparent age by dressing in the style which had always suited her. Her dainty drawing-rooms were curiously conventional--the natural result of _carte-blanche_ to a fashionable upholsterer. She wore a blue-green Empire tea-gown, a long chain of uncut turquoises, a scarab ring, and a curious comb in her black, loose hair, and was always trying, and always trying in vain, to be unusual. Her name was Lucy (as any one who understood the subject of names must have seen at a glance), but she had changed it to Vera, on the ground that it was more Russian. There seemed no special object in this, as she had married a Scotchman. One really rare possession she certainly had--a husband who, notwithstanding that he felt a mild dislike for her merely, bullied her and interfered with her quite as much as if he were wildly in love. He was a rising barrister, and nearly every evening Vera had to undergo a very cross examination as to what she had done during the day, while being only too well aware that he neither listened to her answers, nor would have been interested if he had.