The little maid vanished; Kit-Ki, who had been unceremoniously spilled from Selwyn’s knees, sat yawning, then rose and walked noiselessly to the hearth.

“I don’t know how I happened to do it,” he muttered, still abashed by his plight.

“We rekindled the fire for your benefit,” she said; “you had better use it before you retire.”  And she seated herself in the arm-chair, stretching out her ungloved hands to the blaze—­smooth, innocent hands, so soft, so amazingly fresh and white.

He moved a step forward into the warmth, stood a moment, then reached forward for a chair and drew it up beside hers.

“Do you mean to say you are not sleepy?” he asked.

“I?  No, not in the least.  I will be to-morrow, though.”

“Did you have a good time?”

“Yes—­rather.”

“Wasn’t it gay?”

“Gay?  Oh, very.”

Her replies were unusually short—­almost preoccupied.  She was generally more communicative.

“You danced a lot, I dare say,” he ventured.

“Yes—­a lot,” studying the floor.

“Decent partners?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Who was there?”

She looked up at him. “You were not there,” she said, smiling.

“No; I cut it.  But I did not know you were going; you said nothing about it.”

“Of course, you would have stayed if you had known, Captain Selwyn?” She was still smiling.

“Of course,” he replied.

“Would you really?”

“Why, yes.”

There was something not perfectly familiar to him in the girl’s bright brevity, in her direct personal inquiry; for between them, hitherto, the gaily impersonal had ruled except in moments of lightest badinage.

“Was it an amusing dinner?” she asked, in her turn.

“Rather.”  Then he looked up at her, but she had stretched her slim silk-shod feet to the fender, and her head was bent aside, so that he could see only the curve of the cheek and the little close-set ear under its ruddy mass of gold.

“Who was there?” she asked, too, carelessly.

For a moment he did not speak; under his bronzed cheek the flat muscles stirred.  Had some meddling, malicious fool ventured to whisper an unfit jest to this young girl?  Had a word—­or a smile and a phrase cut in two—­awakened her to a sorry wisdom at his expense?  Something had happened; and the idea stirred him to wrath—­as when a child is wantonly frightened or a dumb creature misused.

“What did you ask me?” he inquired gently.

“I asked you who was there, Captain Selwyn.”

He recalled some names, and laughingly mentioned his dinner partner’s preference for Harmon.  She listened absently, her chin nestling in her palm, only the close-set, perfect ear turned toward him.

“Who led the cotillion?” he asked.

“Jack Ruthven—­dancing with Rosamund Fane.”

She drew her feet from the fender and crossed them, still turned away from him; and so they remained in silence until again she shifted her position, almost impatiently.