She looked down the long room. Between the heads of innumerable men and women she could see Miss Schley. Her husband was hidden. She would have preferred to see him. Miss Schley’s head was by no means expressive of the naked truth. It merely looked cool, self-possessed, and--so Lady Holme said to herself--extremely American. What she meant by that she could, perhaps, hardly have explained. “Do you admire Miss Schley’s appearance?” Robin Pierce spoke again with a touch of humorous malice. He knew Lady Holme so well that he had no objection to seem wanting in tact to her when he had a secret end to gain. She looked at him sharply; leaning forward over the table and opening her eyes very wide. “Why are you forgetting your manners to-night and bombarding me with questions?” “The usual reason--devouring curiosity.” She hesitated, looking at him. Then suddenly her face changed. Something, some imp of adorable frankness, peeped out of it at him, and her whole body seemed confiding. “Miss Schley is going about London imitating me. Now, isn’t that true? Isn’t she?” “I believe she is. Damned impertinence!” He muttered the last words under his breath. “How can I admire her?” There was something in the way she said that which touched him. He leaned forward to her. “Why not punish her for it?” “How?” “Reveal what she can’t imitate.” “What’s that?” “All you hide and I divine.” “Go on.” “She mimics the husk. She couldn’t mimic the kernel.” “Ice, my lady?” Lady Holme started. Till the footman spoke she had not quite realised how deeply interested she was in the conversation. She helped herself to some ice. “You can go on, Mr. Pierce,” she said when the man had gone. “But you understand.” She shook her head, smiling. Her body still looked soft and attractive, and deliciously feminine. “Miss Schley happens to have some vague resemblance to you in height and colouring. She is a clever mimic. She used to be a professional mimic.” “Really!” “That was how she first became known.” “In America?” “Yes.” “Why should she imitate me?” “Have you been nice to her?” “I don’t know. Yes. Nice enough.” Robin shook his head. “You think she dislikes me then?” “Do women want definite reasons for half the things they do? Miss Schley may not say to herself that she dislikes you, any more than you say to yourself that you dislike her. Nevertheless--” “We should never get on. No.” “Consider yourselves enemies--for no reasons, or secret woman’s reasons. It’s safer.” Lady Holme looked down the gallery again. Miss Schley’s fair head was bending forward to some invisible person. “And the mimicry?” she asked, turning again to Robin. “Can only be applied to mannerisms, to the ninety-ninth part, the inconsiderable fraction of your charm. Miss Schley could never imitate the hidden woman, the woman who sings, the woman who laughs at, denies herself when she is not singing.” “But no one cares for her--if she exists.”