Janet, a somewhat sharp-featured clever-looking girl of four-and-twenty, came up and shook hands with him, but her cold light eyes beneath the fringe of red hair, looked to him unfriendly. She just passed him on to her younger sister who was enjoying a comfortable little flirtation at the other side of the room with a middle-aged officer. “This is Ralph Denmead, Minnie,” she said, returning to her former place, and resuming the interrupted conversation with a lady caller. Minnie, who was also redhaired, had a more friendly expression, she smiled at him as she shook hands. “Fraulein has taken Evereld to her French class, but they will soon be home, and then they will look after you,” she said, motioning him to a chair at some little distance from herself and the Major. It was a modern imitation of an antique chair, very hard in the seat, very high from the ground, and with rich carving all over the back which made any sort of comfort impossible. As he sat on it with his legs uncomfortably dangling, he saw the lady who was talking to Janet put up her long-handled eye-glass, and inspect him critically as if he had been some strange animal at the Zoological Gardens. However small schoolboys were not interesting, she soon put down the eye-glass and turned to Miss Mactavish with a question which arrested Ralph’s attention. “By the bye, have you read ‘The Marriage of Melissa’? It is the book of the season, you must get it my dear at once, everyone is talking of it, and it is an open secret that Sir Algernon Wyte and Mrs. Hereward Lyne wrote it, though of course it appeared anonymously.” “What is it? A society novel?” “Yes, and such a plot! There’s a tremendous run upon it they say, and wherever you go you hear people discussing it.” Then followed a graphic account of the chief characters, and the most difficult situations; it was a plot which made the boy’s ears tingle. He wriggled round in his chair and tried to become interested in the vapid talk of Major Gillot and Minnie, it was doubtless very interesting to them, but to him it seemed the most insane interchange of bantering compliments and teasing replies that he had ever heard. Was this love making? he wondered. If so, they did it much better in books. It was not in this fashion that Frank Osbaldistone wooed Di Vernon, or that John Kidd made love to Lorna Doone. He looked wearily across to the hearthrug where Sir Matthew was shouting unintelligible jargon about the money market into the ear of a deaf old Scotsman; then in desperation tried to listen to Lady Mactavish’s grumbling voice as she related her difficulties to a soothing and sympathetic friend. “You are always burdening yourself with other people’s affairs,” said the purring voice of the adept in flattery.