“By the way, do you know my name?” she asked.

“No,” he said frankly, “do you know mine?”

“Of course, I do; I listened breathlessly when somebody presented you wholesale at your sister’s the other day.  I’m Rosamund Fane.  You might as well be instructed because you’re to take me in at the Orchils’ next Thursday night, I believe.”

“Rosamund Fane,” he repeated coolly.  “I wonder how we’ve avoided each other so consistently this winter?  I never before had a good view of you, though I heard you talking to young Innis at dinner.  And yet,” he added, smiling, “if I had been instructed to look around and select somebody named Rosamund, I certainly should have decided on you.”

“A compliment?” she asked, raising her delicate eyebrows.

“Ask yourself,” he said.

“I do; and I get snubbed.”

And, smiling still, he said:  “Do you know the most mischievous air that Schubert ever worried us with?”

“‘Rosamund,’” she said; “and—­thank you, Captain Selwyn.”  She had coloured to the hair.

“‘Rosamund,’” he nodded carelessly—­“the most mischievous of melodies—­” He stopped short, then coolly resumed:  “That mischievous quality is largely a matter of accident, I fancy.  Schubert never meant that ‘Rosamund’ should interfere with anybody’s business.”

“And—­when did you first encounter the malice in ‘Rosamund,’ Captain Selwyn?” she asked with perfect self-possession.

He did not answer immediately; his smile had died out.  Then:  “The first time I really understood ‘Rosamund’ was when I heard Rosamund during a very delightful dinner.”

She said:  “If a woman keeps at a man long enough she’ll extract compliments or yawns.”  And looking up at a chinless young man who had halted near her:  “George, Captain Selwyn has acquired such a charmingly Oriental fluency during his residence in the East that I thought—­if you ever desired to travel again—­” She shrugged, and, glancing at Selwyn:  “Have you met my husband?  Oh, of course.”

They exchanged a commonplace or two, then other people separated them without resistance on their part.  And Selwyn found himself drifting, mildly interested in the vapid exchange of civilities which cost nobody a mental effort.

His sister, he had once thought, was certainly the most delightfully youthful matron in New York.  But now he made an exception of Mrs. Fane; Rosamund Fane was much younger—­must have been younger, for she still had something of that volatile freshness—­that vague atmosphere of immaturity clinging to her like a perfume almost too delicate to detect.  And under that the most profound capacity for mischief he had ever known of.  Sauntering amiably amid the glittering groups continually forming and disintegrating under the clustered lights, he finally succeeded in reaching his hostess.

And Mrs. T. West Minster disengaged herself from the throng with intention as he approached.