Lady Cantourne was puzzled. There was something going on which she did not understand. Within the sound of the pleasant conversation there was the cliquetis of the foil; behind the polite smile there was the gleam of steel. She was rather relieved to turn at this moment and see Sir John Meredith entering the room with his usual courtly bow. He always entered her drawing-room like that. Ah! that little secret of a mutual respect. Some people who are young now will wish, before they have grown old, that they had known it. He shook hands with Lady Cantourne and with Millicent. Then he stood with a deferential half-bow, waiting for the introduction to the girl who was young enough to be his daughter--almost to be his granddaughter. There was something pathetic and yet proud in this old man's uncompromising adherence to the lessons of his youth. “Sir John Meredith--Miss Gordon.” The beginning--the thin end of the wedge, as the homely saying has it--the end which we introduce almost every day of our lives, little suspecting to what it may broaden out. “I had the pleasure of seeing you last night,” said Sir John at once, “at Lady Fitzmannering's evening party, or 'At Home,' I believe we call them nowadays. Some of the guests read the invitation too much au pied de la lettre for my taste. They were so much at home that I, fearing to intrude, left rather early.” “I believe the skirt-dancing frightened you away, Sir John,” said Millicent merrily. “Even old birds, my dear young lady, may sometimes be alarmed by a scarecrow.” “I missed you quite early in the evening,” put in Lady Cantourne, sternly refusing to laugh. She had not had an opportunity of seeing him since her conversation with Jocelyn, and the dangers of the situation were fully appreciated by such an experienced woman of the world. “They began to clear the upper end of the room,” he explained, “and I assisted them in the most practical manner in my power.” He was beginning to wonder why he had been invited--nay, almost commanded--to come, by an imperious little note. And of late, whenever Sir John began to wonder he began also to feel old. His fingers strayed towards his unsteady lips as if he were about to make one of those little movements of senile helplessness to which he sometimes gave way. For a moment Lady Cantourne hesitated between two strokes of social diplomacy--but only for a moment. She had heard the bell ring, and trusted that at the other end of the wire there might be one of those fatuous young men who nibbled at that wire like foolish fish round a gilt spoon-bait. Her ladyship decided to carry on the social farce a few minutes longer, instead of offering the explanation which all were awaiting. “We women,” she said, “were not so easily deterred from our social duties.”