“To what?”

Notwithstanding his efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger.  Glancing up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and if she shrivelled, it was only as a cat shrivels before springing at a mastiff.

“I can’t expose her to the chance of meeting—­”

She paused, not from hesitation, but with the rhetorical intention of making the end of her phrase more telling.

“My future wife,” he whispered, before she had time to go on.  “It’s only fair to tell you that.”

“Good heavens!  You’re not going to marry the creature!”

Mrs. Bayford brought out the words with the dramatic action and intensity they deserved.  In the hum of talk around and across the table it was doubtful whether or not they were heard, and yet more than one of the guests glanced up with a look of interrogation.  Dorothea caught her father’s eyes in a gaze which he had some difficulty in returning with the proper amount of steadiness; but Mrs. Berrington Jones came to the rescue of the company by asking Mrs. Bayford to tell the amusing story of how her bath had been managed in Japan.

So the incident passed by, leaving a sense of mystery in the air; though for Derek, all sense of annoyance disappeared in the knowledge that he was Diane’s champion.

He was thinking over the incident in the luxurious semi-darkness of the electric brougham as they were going homeward, when the clear voice of Dorothea broke in on his meditation.

“Are you going to be married, father?”

The question could not be a surprise to him after the occurrence at the table, but he was not prepared to give an affirmative answer on the spur of the moment.

“What makes you ask?” he inquired, after a second’s reflection.

“I heard what Mrs. Bayford said.”

“And how should you feel if I were?”

“It would depend.”

“On what?”

“On whether or not it was any one I liked.”

“That’s fair.  And if it was some one whom you did like?”

“Then it would depend on whether or not it was—­Diane.”

“And if it was Diane?”

“I should be very glad.”

“Why?”

She slipped her arm through his and snuggled up to him.

“Oh, for a lot of reasons.  First, because I’ve always supposed you’d be getting married one day; and I’ve been terribly afraid you’d pick out some one I couldn’t get along with.”

“Have I ever shown any symptom to justify that alarm?”

“N—­no; but you never can tell—­with a man.”

“Can you be any surer with a woman?”

“No; and that’s one of my other reasons.  I’m not very sure about myself.”

“You don’t mean that it’s to be young Wap—?” he began, uneasily.