Foster-ffrench was a younger son who, having failed to grow sisal profitably in the Bahamas, was now experimenting in Mozambique with the jikungo or Inhambane nut, and liable at any moment to experiment with vanila in Tahiti or pearls on the Great Barrier Reef; the only experiment he was never likely to make was going back to Mrs. Foster-ffrench. Dorothy wondered what Tony found to attract him in such a gathering; yet he was in tremendous spirits, obviously delighted that Archie Keith should have met the Vanity comedian that afternoon and warned him who would be in front. He was proud that all the girls on the stage kept their eyes on Dorothy throughout the evening, proud that the comedian inserted two special gags for the benefit of the jolly party, which were rewarded by a loud burst of laughter; and when the alarmed audience trained their opera-glasses upon the boxes as a beleagured garrison might train their guns upon the wild yell of savages he was radiant. After the performance they sat round a large circular table in the Savoy, and when the orchestra played "Dolly and her Collie" there was so much applause from the tables all round that Dorothy could not help feeling rather proud of the pleasure her return to town had given and was touched to think that her memory was still green. The evening wound up at the Lees' flat in Berkeley Street, when Adrian Lee and Clarehaven hospitably lost a good deal of money to their guests in the course of three hours' baccarat. Now that Dorothy had broken her rule and had visited the Vanity for the first time since she had left the boards, she felt that she could not maintain her policy of isolation any longer; she told Clarehaven as much when they were strolling back down Curzon Street and breathing in the air of night after those feverish rooms. "Doodles, my dear thing, I'm delighted! I never wanted you to give up any of your old friends. It was you who insisted on cutting them out like that." "And if," she went on, "we can sit in a box with Rita Mainwaring, I don't think I can keep up this pretense of not being able to meet Olive." "I quite agree with you. I should love to meet Olive again." "Then what about asking her to lunch?" Dorothy suggested. "The sooner the better," he assented, enthusiastically. A note was sent round to the Vanity, in which Dorothy, without making the least allusion to anything that had happened in the past, most cordially invited Olive to lunch with them two days later. Olive replied, thanking Dorothy for the invitation, but mentioned that she was now living with Sylvia Scarlett, and, since she did not like to go without her and since she knew Dorothy and Sylvia were no longer on good terms, was afraid she must decline lunch, though she promised to come and see her old friend some afternoon. "Living with Sylvia Scarlett, eh?" commented Tony, with raised eyebrows.