During the next fortnight Clarehaven paid several visits to town, but Dorothy was steadily unwilling to be much alone with him, and, finally, one hot afternoon in mid-May, exasperated by her indifference and caution, he went back to Oxford in a fit of petulance (temper would have been too strong a word to describe his behavior, which was like a spoiled child's) and relapsed into another spell of silence. A week or so after this Queenie Molyneux asked Dorothy one day how long it was since she had heard from Clarehaven, and when Dorothy countered the awkward question by asking, rather bitterly, how long it was since she had heard from Lonsdale, Queenie admitted that he, too, had been silent for some time. "I'm afraid I'm too expensive for Lonnie," she laughed, lightly. "He's a nice boy, but love in a cottage would never suit me, and love anywhere else wouldn't suit him. So that's that." "You don't know what it is to be in love," said Dorothy. "Cut it out!" said Miss Molyneux. "I'd rather not learn." Dorothy would have liked to cut her own tongue out for playing her false by uttering such a sentiment to a girl like Queenie. However, she had no wish to seem a whit less hard than her rival--Dorothy was beginning to achieve such a projection of her personality across the footlights that Queenie really had become a rival, though Queenie might have put it the other way round--and she consoled herself for Clarehaven's absence by giving a great deal of attention to the new frocks that the fine weather demanded; also in consequence of a suggestion by the great man she began to take riding-lessons, with which she made as rapid progress as with her dancing, to which she had already been devoting herself for some time. Toward the end of the month Dorothy and Olive were criticizing the fashions in the windows of Bond Street when somebody slapped her on the back and, turning round with half a thought that she was being called upon to reply to a novel method of attack by Clarehaven, she perceived Sylvia Scarlett. It was typical of Sylvia to greet her like this on meeting her again for the first time after a year, but the old awe of Sylvia prevented her from expressing her dislike of such horseplay in Bond Street, and a sudden shyness drove her into self-assertion. She began to talk about lunching at Romano's and supping at the Savoy and of the success she had made in "The River Girl" sextet, to all of which Sylvia listened with a smile until she broke abruptly into her discourse with: "Look here! A little less of the Queen of Sheba, if you don't mind. Don't forget I'm one of the blokes as is glad to smell the gratings outside a baker's." Dorothy did not think this remark particularly amusing; there was quite enough genuine cockney to be endured on the stage without having to listen to an exaggerated imitation of it in Bond Street. Olive, however, was laughing, and Dorothy decided to take Sylvia down a peg by asking what she was doing now.