“She’s a mighty hunter, before the Lord!  She marked down poor Hilton last cold weather,” cooed the silken voice in Roy’s inattentive ear.  “Of course you know he’s one of our coming men!  And I’ve a shrewd idea he was intended for Rose.  But in Miss Rose the matchmaker has met her match!  She’s clever—­that girl; and she’s reduced the tactics of non-resistance to a fine art.  I don’t believe she ever stands up to her mother.  She smiles and smiles—­and goes her own way.  She likes playing with soldiers; partly because they’re good company; partly, I’ll swear, because she knows it keeps her mother on tenter-hooks.  But when it comes to business, she’ll choose as shrewdly——­”

Roy stopped dancing and confronted her, half laughing, half irate.  “If you’re keen on talking—­let’s talk.  I can’t do both.”  He stated the fact politely, but with decision.  “And—­frankly, I hate hearing a girl pulled to pieces, just because she’s charming and good-looking and——­”

“Oh, my dear boy,” she interrupted unfailingly—­sweet solicitude in her lifted gaze. “Did I trample on your chivalrous toes?  Or is it——?”

“No, it isn’t.”  He resented the barefaced implication.  “Naturally—­I admire her——­”

“Oh, naturally!  You can’t help yourselves, any of you!  She’s ’sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently mad.’  No use looking daggers!  It’s a fact.  I don’t say she flirts outrageously—­like I do!  She simply expects homage—­and gets it.  She expects men to fall in love with her—­and they topple over like ninepins.  Sometimes—­when I’m feeling magnanimous—­I catch a ninepin as it falls!  Look at her now, with that R.E. boy—­plainly in the toils!”

Roy declined to look.  If she was trying to put him off Miss Arden, she was on the wrong tack.  Besides—­he wanted to dance.

“One more turn?” he suggested, nipping a fresh outbreak in the bud.  “But, please—­no talking.”

She laughed and shook her fan at him.  “Epicure!” But after all, it was an indirect compliment to her dancing:  and for the space of two minutes, she held her peace.

Throughout the brief pause, she rippled on, with negligible interludes; but not till they re-entered the Hall did she revert to the theme that had so exasperated Roy.  There she espied Desmond, standing under an archway, staring straight before him, apparently lost in thought.

She indicated him, discreetly, with her fan.  “The Happy Warrior (that’s my private name for him) seems to have something on his mind.  Can he have proposed—­at last?  I confess I’m curious.  But of course you know all about it, Mr Sinclair.  Don’t tell me!”

“I won’t!” said Roy gravely.  “You probably know more than I do.”

“But I thought you were such intimate friends?  How superbly masculine!”

“Well—­he is.”

“Oh, he is!  He’s so firmly planted on his feet that he tacitly invites one to tilt at him!  I confess I’ve already tried my hand—­and failed.  So it soothes my vanity to observe that even the Rose of Sharon isn’t visibly upsetting his balance.  Frankly, I’m more than a little intrigued over that affair.  It seems to have reached a certain point and stuck there.  At one time—­I thought——­”