* * * * * When at one A.M. on the following morning, "The Fastness" party had been driven home, Leonetta and Vanessa, much too excited to go to bed, lingered interminably over their undressing, and sat talking until nearly daybreak. Vanessa was feeling very happy on the whole, because she had had more dances with Denis than she had expected. She was therefore quite prepared to be indulgent towards her school-friend, and to exchange notes without bitterness. "You had a lovely time with Lord Henry, didn't you?" she said. "You are a flirt, Leo!" "My dear, it was simply heavenly." "And wasn't Denis wild!" Vanessa exclaimed, hoping to widen the breach between these two. "Was he?" "He was wild enough this afternoon, but when he saw you dancing so often with Lord Henry--well!----" "What did he say this afternoon,--do tell me!" "He said you were too young to be always talking all sorts of deep things with a man of forty." Leonetta laughed. "Well, I like that!" she cried. "I wasn't too young last night, was I?" "Why, what happened last night?" Vanessa enquired, without revealing a trace of envy in her inscrutable Jewish eyes. "Oh, well, never mind. I suppose I ought to say the night before last. But, anyhow, Lord Henry is not forty. I asked him. He's only thirty-three." "Well, I'm only repeating what Denis said," Vanessa observed. "I know one thing, Lord Henry's jolly clever. Do you know what it is to feel your skin creep all over while anybody's talking to you even about simple subjects?" "Yes--rather!" "Well, that's what Lord Henry makes me feel. And what's more, he has a ripping way of putting things scientifically to you. He never flatters you. He proves to you on scientific principles that you are one of the best,--do you understand?" Vanessa was delighted, and, strange as it may seem, so was Leonetta; an unusual coincidence of sentiment in these two flappers--for Vanessa had not long ceased from being a flapper--which foreboded no good to any one. * * * * * The following day broke dull and wet for the inhabitants of Brineweald, and for the first hour of the morning the rain was sufficiently heavy to keep the two households apart. Lord Henry was therefore thrown on the company of Sir Joseph's party, and he entertained them, or perhaps disturbed them, as they digested their breakfast, by discussing various aspects of English matrimonial arrangements. He had ruminated overnight the principle that Mrs. Delarayne had laid down in regard to Leonetta,--"that she was much too good for Denis Malster,"--and he was beginning to see that it was entirely justified. "It is a pity," he declared, addressing Miss Mallowcoid, "that it is almost impossible in this country to arrange matches. I don't see why you can't, but you can't." Denis Malster, Guy, and the Tribes dropped their newspapers, and Sir Joseph doing likewise, regarded the young nobleman with a perplexed frown.