Mr. Prohack suspected that his cheeks were turning pale, and was ashamed of himself.  Even Sissie, for all her young, hard confidence, wavered.

But Eve stepped in.

“Don’t you know, Mr. Bishop?—­No, of course you don’t.  We ought to have told you.  My daughter is now Mrs. Morfey.  You see in our family we all have such a horror of the conventional wedding and reception and formal honeymoon and so on, that we decided the marriage should be strictly private, with no announcements of any kind.  I really think you are the first to know.  One thing I’ve always liked about actresses is that in the afternoon you can read of them getting married that day and then go and see them play the same evening.  It seems to me so sensible.  And as we were all of the same opinion at our house, especially Sissie and her father, there was no difficulty.”

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Softly Bishop shaking hands with Ozzie.  “I believe I shall follow your example.”

Mr. Prohack sank into a chair.

“I feel rather faint,” he said.  “Bishop, do you think we might have a cocktail or so?”

“My dear fellow, how thoughtless of me!  Of course!  Waiter!  Waiter!” As Mr. Bishop swung round in the direction of waiters Eve turned in alarm to Mr. Prohack.  Mr. Prohack with much deliberation winked at her, and she drew back.  “Yes,” he murmured.  “You’ll be the death of me one day, and then you’ll be sorry.”

“I don’t think a cocktail is at all a good thing for you, dad,” Sissie calmly observed.

The arrival of Miss Fancy provided a distraction more agreeable than Mr. Prohack thought possible; he positively welcomed the slim, angular blonde, for she put an end to a situation which, prolonged another moment, would have resulted in a severe general constraint.

“You’re late, my dear,” said Mr. Softly Bishop, firmly.

The girl’s steely blue-eyed glance shot out at the greeting, but seemed to drop off flatly from Mr. Bishop’s adamantine spectacles like a bullet from Bessemer armour.

“Am I?” she replied uncertainly, in her semi-American accent.  “Where’s the ladies’ cloakroom of this place?”

“I’ll show you,” said Mr. Bishop, with no compromise.

The encounter was of the smallest, but it made Mr. Prohack suspect that perhaps Mr. Bishop was not after all going into the great warfare of matrimony blindly or without munitions.

“I’ve taken the opportunity to tell Miss Fancy that she will be the only unmarried woman, at my lunch,” said Mr. Bishop amusingly, when he returned from piloting his beloved.  A neat fellow, beyond question!

Miss Fancy had apparently to re-dress herself, judging from the length of her absence.  The cocktails, however, beguiled the suspense.

“Is this for me?” she asked, picking up a full glass when she came back.

“No, my dear,” said Mr. Bishop.  “It isn’t.  We will go in to lunch.”  And they went in to lunch, leaving unconsumed the cocktail which the abstemious and spartan Sissie had declined to drink.