But her mother was deaf and smilingly sensitive about it, so she merely guessed what reply her child expected:  “It’s all settled, dear; Captain Selwyn arrived a moment ago.”  And she closed the file.

It was already too late, anyhow; and presently, turning to see who was seated on his left, Selwyn found himself gazing into the calm, flushed face of Alixe Ruthven.  It was their third encounter.

They exchanged a dazed nod of recognition, a meaningless murmur, and turned again, apparently undisturbed, to their respective dinner partners.

A great many curious eyes, lingering on them, shifted elsewhere, in reluctant disappointment.

As for the hostess, she had, for one instant, come as near to passing heavenward as she could without doing it when she discovered the situation.  Then she accepted it with true humour.  She could afford to.  But her daughters, Sheila and Dorothy, suffered acutely, being of this year’s output and martyrs to responsibility.

Meanwhile, Selwyn, grimly aware of an accident somewhere, and perfectly conscious of the feelings which must by this time dominate his hostess, was wondering how best to avoid anything that might resemble a situation.

Instead of two or three dozen small tables, scattered among the palms of the winter garden, their hostess had preferred to construct a great oval board around the aquarium.  The arrangement made it a little easier for Selwyn and Mrs. Ruthven.  He talked to his dinner partner until she began to respond in monosyllables, which closed each subject that he opened and wearied him as much as he was boring her.  But Bradley Harmon, the man on her right, evidently had better fortune; and presently Selwyn found himself with nobody to talk to, which came as near to embarrassing him as anything could, and which so enraged his hostess that she struck his partner’s name from her lists for ever.  People were already glancing at him askance in sly amusement or cold curiosity.

Then he did a thing which endeared him to Mrs. T. West Minster and to her two disconsolate children.

“Mrs. Ruthven,” he said, very naturally and pleasantly, “I think perhaps we had better talk for a moment or two—­if you don’t mind.”

She said quietly, “I don’t mind,” and turned with charming composure.  Every eye shifted to them, then obeyed decency or training; and the slightest break in the gay tumult was closed up with chatter and laughter.

“Plucky,” said Sandon Craig to his fair neighbour; “but by what chance did our unfortunate hostess do it?”

“She’s usually doing it, isn’t she?  What occupies me,” returned his partner, “is how on earth Alixe could have thrown away that adorable man for Jack Ruthven.  Why, he is already trying to scramble into Rosamund Fane’s lap—­the horrid little poodle!—­always curled up on the edge of your skirt!”

She stared at Mrs. Ruthven across the crystal reservoir brimming with rose and ivory-tinted water-lilies.