“Oh, no it isn’t,” said Miss Lorne, “I don’t take any credit for it—­I was born so.  Dear Betty was a regular flirt when she was ever so small, but I never was.  I’m sincere and I can’t take any credit for it.  I was born so.”

Holloway was talking and Mrs. Rosscott’s eyes were uplifted to his.  Jack was sure there was adoration in them.  He knew Holloway was in love with her.  How could he be a man and help it.  Oh, it was damnable—­unbearable.

He stood up suddenly.  He couldn’t help it.  He was crazed, maddened, choked, stifled.  The fates must intervene and rescue his reason or else—­

There was a blessed sound—­the announcing of dinner.

* * * * *

Later there was music in the great white salon where the organ was.  Maude Lome sang, and the man with the monocle accompanied her on the organ.  Mrs. Rosscott sat on a divan between Holloway and General Jiggs.  Jack was left out in the cold.

(Surely in love with Holloway!)

It was only twenty-six hours since he had first met her, and he hated to consider his life as unalterably blasted, or to even give up the fight.  Nevertheless, whenever he looked across the room he saw fresh signs of the most awful kind.  Even the way that she didn’t trouble to trouble over the one man, but devoted herself to General Jiggs, was in itself a very bad portent.  Well, such was life and one must bear it somehow and be a man.  Probably he would suffer less after the first five or ten years—­he hoped so at any rate.  But, great heavens, what a fearful prospect until those first five or ten years were gone by!

Finally he went up to his own room and put on another collar and sat down at the open window and thought about it for a good while all quiet and alone by himself.  After that he went back downstairs.

She was gone, and Holloway, too.  He felt freshly unhappy.  When you come to consider, it was so damned unjust for one man to be thirty-five while another—­just as decent a fellow in every way—­was in college.  He—­

A hand touched his arm.

He turned from where he was standing in the window recess, and looked into her eyes.

“I’m very wicked, am I not?” she asked, looking up at him so straight and honest.

“I can’t admit that,” he replied.

“But I am.  I know it myself.  What Bob told you was all true.  I’m a heartless wretch.”

She spoke so earnestly that his heart sank lower and lower.

“I wanted to speak to you about to-morrow morning,” she said, after a little pause.  “You know we were going to drive at ten together, and—­and I wondered if—­you see, Mr. Holloway’s an old friend, and he’s had so much to tell me to-night, and he isn’t half through—­”

She was drawing him with a chain, a hair chain, which she had woven out of her eyelashes in the twinkling of an eye (either eye).

He felt himself helpless—­and choked.