“Another what?” asked Dick.

“Another unnecessary victim,” replied Locker.  And with this he returned to the front of the house.

At last Olive came down the stairs, and she was alone.  Locker stepped quickly up to her.

“If I should marry,” he said, “would I be expected to entertain that Austrian?”

She stopped, and gave the question her serious consideration.  “I should think,” she said, “that that would depend a good deal upon whom you should marry.”

“How can you talk in that way?” he exclaimed.  “As if there were anything to depend upon!”

“Nothing to depend upon,” said Olive, slightly raising her eyebrows.  “That is bad.”  And she went into the dining-room.

The afternoon was an exceptionally fine one, but the party at Broadstone did not take advantage of it; there seemed to be a spirit of unrest pervading the premises, and when the carriage started on a drive along the river only Mr. and Mrs. Fox were in it.  Mrs. Easterfield would not leave Olive and Mr. Hemphill, and she did not encourage them to go.  Consequently there were three young men who did not wish to go.

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Fox, as they rolled away, “that a young woman, such as Miss Asher, has it in her power to interfere very much with the social feeling which should pervade a household like this.  If she were to satisfy herself with attracting one person, all the rest of us might be content to make ourselves happy in such fashions as might present themselves.”

“The rest of us!” exclaimed Mrs. Fox.

“Yes,” replied her husband.  “I mean you, and Mrs. Easterfield, and myself, and the rest.  That young woman’s indeterminate methods of fascination interfere with all of us.”

“I don’t exactly see how they interfere with me,” said Mrs. Fox rather stiffly.

“If the carriage had been filled, as was expected,” said her husband, “I might have had the pleasure of driving you in a buggy.”

She turned to him with a smile.  “Immediately after I spoke,” she said, “I imagined you might be thinking of something of that kind.”

Mrs. Easterfield was not a woman to wait for things to happen in their own good time.  If possible, she liked to hurry them up.  In this Olive and Hemphill affair there was really nothing to wait for; if she left them to themselves there would be no happenings.  As soon as was possible, she took Olive into her own little room, where she kept her writing-table, and into whose sacred precincts her secretary was not allowed to penetrate.

“Now, then,” said she, “what do you think of Mr. Hemphill?”

“I don’t think of him at all,” said Olive, a little surprised.  “Is there anything about him to think of?”

“He sat by you at luncheon,” said Mrs. Easterfield.

“I know that,” said Olive, “and he was better than an empty chair.  I hate sitting by empty chairs.”

“Olive,” exclaimed Mrs. Easterfield with vivacity, “you ought to remember that young man!”