“Try to be serious, Boots,” said Nina.  “There are dozens of nice girls you ought to be agreeable to.  Austin and I were saying only last night what a pity it is that you don’t find either of the Minster twins interesting—­”

“I might find them compoundly interesting,” he admitted, “but unfortunately there’s no chance in this country for multiple domesticity and the simpler pleasures of a compound life.  It’s no use, Nina; I’m not going to marry any girl for ever so long—­anyway, not until Drina releases me on her eighteenth birthday.  Hello!—­somebody’s coming—­and I’m off!”

“I’m not at home; don’t go!” said Nina, laying one hand on his arm to detain him as a card was brought up.  “Oh, it’s only Rosamund Fane!  I did promise to go to the Craigs’ with her. . . .  Do you mind if she comes up?”

“Not if you don’t,” said Boots blandly.  He could not endure Rosamund and she detested him; and Nina, who was perfectly aware of this, had just enough of perversity in her to enjoy their meeting.

Rosamund came in breezily, sables powdered with tiny flecks of snow, cheeks like damask roses, eyes of turquoise.

“How d’ye do!” she nodded, greeting Boots askance as she closed with Nina.  “I came, you see, but do you want to be jammed and mauled and trodden on at the Craigs’?  No?  That’s perfect!—­neither do I. Where is the adorable Eileen?  Nobody sees her any more.”

“She was at the Delmour-Carnes’s yesterday.”

“Was she?  Curious I didn’t see her.  Tea?  With gratitude, dear, if it’s Scotch.”

She sat erect, the furs sliding to the back of the chair, revealing the rather accented details of her perfectly turned figure; and rolling up her gloves she laid her pretty head on one side and considered Boots with very bright and malicious eyes.

“They say,” she said, smiling, “that some very heavy play goes on in that cunning little new house of yours, Mr. Lansing.”

“Really?” he asked blandly.

“Yes; and I’m wondering if it is true.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d care, Mrs. Fane, as long as it makes a good story.”

Rosamund flushed.  Then, always alive to humour, laughed frankly.

“What a nasty thing to say to a woman!” she observed; “it fairly reeks impertinence.  Mr. Lansing, you don’t like me very well, do you?”

“I dare not,” he said, “because you are married.  If you were only free a vinculo matrimonii—­”

Rosamund laughed again, and sat stroking her muff and smiling.  “Curious, isn’t it?” she said to Nina—­“the inborn antipathy of two agreeable human bipeds for one another. Similis simili gaudet—­as my learned friend will admit.  But with us it’s the old, old case of that eminent practitioner, the late Dr. Fell. Esto perpetua! Oh, well!  We can’t help it, can we, Mr. Lansing?” And again to Nina:  “Dear, have you heard anything about Alixe Ruthven?  I think it is the strangest thing that nobody seems to know where she is.  And all anybody can get out of Jack is that she’s in a nerve factory—­or some such retreat—­and a perfect wreck.  She might as well be dead, you know.”