“No doubt,” said Di sharply.

“He got so fascinated talking of her,” I went on.  “He almost forgot that he had a dance with Mrs. Allendale.  Of course Maxine had made a great hit, and all that; but she didn’t stand quite as high as she does now, since she’s become the fashion in Paris.  Perhaps she had nothing except her salary, then, whereas she must have saved up a lot of money by this time.  I have an idea that Ivor would have proposed to her when she was in London if he’d thought her success established.”

“Nonsense!” Di broke out, her cheeks very pink.  “As if Ivor were the kind of man to think of such a thing!”

“He isn’t very rich, and he is very ambitious.  It would be bad for him to marry a poor girl, or a girl who wasn’t well connected socially.  He has to think of such things.”

I watched the effect of these words, with my eyes half shut; for of course Di has all her mother’s money, two hundred thousand English pounds; and through the Mountstuarts, and her aunt who is married to the Foreign Secretary, she has got to know all the best people in England.  Besides, the King and Queen have been particularly nice to her since she was presented, so she has the run of their special set, as well as the political and artistic, and “old-fashioned exclusive” ones.

“Ivor Dundas is a law unto himself,” she said, “and he has plenty of good connections of his own.  He’ll have a little money, too, some day, from an aunt or a god-mother, I believe.  Anyway, he and Miss de Renzie had nothing more than a flirtation.  Aunt Lilian told me so.  She said Maxine was rather proud to have Ivor dangling about, because everyone likes him, and because his travels and his book were being a lot talked about just then.  Naturally, he admired her, because she’s beautiful, and a very great actress—­”

“Oh, your Aunt Lilian would make little of the affair,” I laughed.  “She flirts with him herself.”

“Why, Lisa, Aunt Lilian’s over forty, and he’s twenty-nine!”

“Forty isn’t the end of the world for a woman, nowadays.  She’s a beauty and a great lady.  Ivor always wants the best of everything.  She flirts with him, and he with her.”

Di laughed too, but only to make it seem as if she didn’t care.  “You’d better not say such silly things to Uncle Eric,” she said, staring at the pattern of the cornice.  “Aren’t those funny, gargoyley faces up there?  I never noticed them before.  But oh—­about Mr. Dundas and Maxine de Renzie—­I don’t think, really, that he troubles himself much about her any more, for the other day I—­I happened to ask what she was playing in Paris now, and he didn’t know.  He said he hadn’t been over to see her act, as it was too far away, and he was afraid when he wasn’t too busy, he was too lazy.”

“He said so to you, of course.  But when he spends Saturday to Monday at Folkestone with the godmother who’s going to leave him her money, how easy to slip over the Channel to the fair Maxine, without anyone being the wiser.”