Lady Vivian was perfectly aware of her secretary's point of view, and profoundly indifferent to it. She even took a rather malicious pleasure in saying lightly and yet very decidedly: "John is safe enough, but I don't know what Lesbia Willoughby may choose to talk about. As a girl she had the voice of a pea-hen, and never stopped chattering. So, if you can, please head her off war-talk at dinner." Her employer's trenchant simile as to Mrs. Willoughby's vocal powers could not but recur to Miss Bruce with a sense of its extreme appositeness when the guests entered. Mrs. Willoughby billowed into the room. There was really no other word to describe that rapid, undulating, and yet buoyant advance. Tall as Lady Vivian was, and by no means slightly built, she seemed to Miss Bruce to be at once physically overpowered and almost eclipsed in the strident and voluminous greeting of her old acquaintance. "My _dear_ Joanna! After _all_ these years ... how too, too delightful to see you so absolutely and utterly unchanged! _Dear_ old days! And now we meet in the midst of all these horrors!" The exaggeration of the look she cast round her seemed to include the drawing-room and its occupants alike in the pleasing category. "I'm sorry you don't like my Louis XV.," said Lady Vivian flippantly, and turned to greet the rest of the party. Her cousin John, who looked, even in khaki, a great deal less than his thirty years, smiled at her with steady blue eyes that bore a great resemblance to her own, and wrung her hand, saying, "This is very jolly, Cousin Joanna," in a pleasant, rather serious voice. "And here," said Lesbia Willoughby piercingly--"here is my Lewis." Her Lewis advanced, looking not unnaturally sheepish, and Trevellyan said conscientiously: "May I introduce Major Willoughby to you? My cousin, Lady Vivian." "You _never_ told me, Joanna, that this dear thing was a cousin of yours," shrieked Lesbia reproachfully. "I think it quite disgustingly mean of you, considering that we were girls together." "In the days when we were girls together," said Lady Vivian ruthlessly, "he wasn't born or thought of. Have they announced dinner, Miss Bruce?" "This moment." "Then, do let's go in at once. You must all be very hungry after such a drive." "I _never_ eat nowadays--simply never," proclaimed Mrs. Willoughby as she crossed the hall on Sir Piers's arm. "I think it most unpatriotic. We're all going to be starving quite soon, and the poor are living on simply nothing a day as it is. And one can't _bear_ to touch food while our poor dear boys in the trenches and in Germany are literally starving."