As he so seldom put in an appearance at smart gatherings he had not yet encountered Miss Schley, nor had he heard a whisper of her much-talked-of resemblance to his wife. Her name was known to him as that of a woman whom one or two of his “pals” began to call a “deuced pretty girl” but his interest in her was not greatly awakened. The number of deuced pretty girls that had been in his life, and in the lives of his pals, was legion. They came and went like feathers dancing on the wind. The mere report of them, therefore, casual and drifting, could not excite his permanent attention, or fix their names and the record of their charms in his somewhat treacherous memory. Lady Holme had not once mentioned the American to him. She was a woman who knew how to be silent, and sometimes she was silent by instinct without saying to herself why. Lord Holme never appeared on her Wednesdays; and, indeed, those days were a rather uncertain factor among the London joys. If Lady Holme was to be found in her house at all, she was usually to be found on a Wednesday afternoon. She herself considered that she was at home on Wednesdays, but this idea of hers was often a mere delusion, especially when the season had fully set in. There were a thousand things to be done. She frequently forgot what the day of the week was. Unluckily she forgot it on the Wednesday succeeding her invitation to Miss Schley. The American duly turned up in Cadogan Square and was informed that Lady Holme was not to be seen. She left her card and drove away in her coupe with a decidedly stony expression upon her white face. That day it chanced that Lord Holme came in just before his wife and carelessly glanced over the cards which had been left during the afternoon. He was struck by the name of Pimpernel. It tickled his fancy somehow. As he looked at it he grinned. He looked at it again and vaguely recalled some shreds of the club gossip about Miss Schley’s attractions. When Lady Holme walked quietly into her drawing-room two or three minutes later he met her with Miss Schley’s card in his hand. “What have you got there, Fritz?” she said. He gave her the card. “You never told me you’d run up against her,” he remarked. Lady Holme looked at the card and then, quickly, at her husband. “Why--do you know Miss Schley?” she asked. “Not I.” “Well then?” “Fellows say she’s deuced takin’. That’s all. And she’s got a fetchin’ name--eh? Pimpernel.” He repeated it twice and began to grin once more, and to bend and straighten his legs in the way which sometimes irritated his wife. Lady Holme was again looking at the card. “Surely it isn’t Wednesday?” she said. “Yes, it is. What did you think it was?” “Tuesday--Monday--I don’t know.” “Where’d you meet her?” “Whom? Miss Schley? At the Carlton. A lunch of Amalia Wolfstein’s.” “Is she pretty?” “Yes.” There was no hesitation before the reply. “What colour? “Oh!--not Albino.” Lord Holme stared. “What d’you mean by that, girlie?”