Not a soul except herself at the long, brilliant dinner-table suspected anything between Sir Percy Carlyon and Lucy Armytage, who sat opposite each other. But Alicia Vernon’s violet eyes saw everything without watching. She knew the English habit of not conversing across the table, but she observed that Sir Percy Carlyon spoke to Lucy Armytage once or twice. Lucy, herself, instead of answering him with the gaiety and spirit she showed in her conversation with her neighbours, replied to Sir Percy with only a brilliant smile and a word or two. The indications were so slight that not even the hawk-eyed Lord Baudesert noticed them, but nothing escapes a jealous woman. Meanwhile, never had Alicia Vernon exerted herself more to please. She sat on Lord Baudesert’s right hand and on her left was Senator March. Mrs. Vernon was a better listener than talker. She had not the naïve effervescence of the American women, but she had a softness, a charming air of listening with profound attention, which few American women ever acquire. Senator March, struck from the beginning by her manner of the highest breeding, admiring her mature beauty and charmed by her subtle and even silent flattery, thought it the pleasantest dinner he had ever attended. Eleanor Chantrey sat on the other side of him and he experienced a glow of pleasure which a man feels when he basks in beauty’s light. But Eleanor Chantrey was not much older than Lucy Armytage and her range of conversation was strictly limited to what had happened since she came out in society. Senator March had passed his fiftieth birthday and liked to talk about things which happened twenty-five years before. He had an agreeable feeling with Mrs. Vernon of being contemporaries, which he could not feel with a younger woman. Alicia Vernon, on her part, recognised Senator March’s virtues as a dinner man and was tactful enough to keep to herself the surprise she felt at finding an American so accomplished.