indefinable pleasure.  The lines of her beautiful mouth, too often, nowadays, weary and drooping, softened into a quiet, almost mysterious smile.  Her eyes—­very large and wonderful eyes they were—­seemed to hold some other vision than the vision of this tall, forceful-looking man.  It was a moment which no one, perhaps, except those two themselves realised.  To the lookers-on it seemed only a meeting between two very distinguished and attractive-looking people, naturally interested in each other.

“It is a great pleasure to meet Lady Dredlinton,” Wingate said.  “I hope that Miss Baldwin’s remark will not prejudice me in your opinion.  I am really not such a frivolous person as she would have you believe.”

“Even if you were,” she rejoined, sinking into the chair which had been brought for her, “a little frivolity from men, nowadays, is rather in order, isn’t it?”

“It’s all very well for those who can afford to indulge in it,” Kendrick grumbled.  “We can’t earn our bread and butter now on the Stock Exchange.  Even our friend Maurice here, who works as long as an hour and a half a day sometimes, declares that he can barely afford his new Rolls-Royce.”

“You men are so elusive about your prospects,” Sarah declared.  “I believe that Jimmy could afford to marry me to-morrow if he’d only make up his mind to it.”

“I’m ready to try, anyhow,” the young man assured her promptly.  “Girls nowadays talk so much rot about giving up their liberty.”

“Once a taxicab driver, always a taxicab driver,” Sarah propounded.  “Did you know that that was my profession, Mr. Wingate?  If you do need anything in the shape of a comfortable conveyance while you are in town, will you remember me?  I’ll send you a card, if you like.”

“Don’t, for heaven’s sake, listen to that young woman,” Kendrick begged.

“Her cab’s on its last legs,” the Honourable Jimmy warned him, “three cylinders missing, and the fourth makes a noise like popcorn when you come to a gradient.”

“It isn’t as though she could drive,” Maurice White put in.  “There isn’t an insurance company in London will take her on as a risk.”

Sarah glanced from one to the other in well-assumed viciousness.

“Don’t I hate you all!” she exclaimed bitterly.  “I can understand Jimmy, because he likes me to drive him all the time, but you others, who aren’t regular clients at all, why you should butt in and try to spoil my chances, I can’t think.  Mr. Wingate is just my conception of the ideal fare—­generous, affable, and with trans-Atlantic notions about tips.  I shall send you my card, all the same, Mr. Wingate.”

“And I hope,” Josephine said, “that Mr. Wingate will not take the slightest notice of all the rubbish these unkind people have been saying.  Miss Baldwin drives me continually and has given me every satisfaction.”

“‘Every satisfaction’ I love,” Sarah declared.  “I shall have that framed.”