“I suppose you didn’t take her for a lady, did you?” my mistress was curious to know.  “You pride yourself on your discrimination, your stepfather says.”

“There’s nothing the matter with my discrimination,” replied the young man, smiling.  But his smile was not for her ladyship.  It was for me; and it was meant to be a piquant little secret between us two.

How well I remembered asking the chauffeur, “Could you know a Bertie?” And how he answered that he had known one, and consequently didn’t want to know another.  Here was the same Bertie; and now that I too knew him, I thought I would prefer to know another, rather than know more of him.  Yet he was good-looking, almost handsome.  He had short, curly light hair, eyes as blue as turquoises, seen by daylight, full red lips under the little moustache, a white forehead, a dimple in the chin, and a very good figure.  He had also an educated, perhaps too well educated, voice, which tried to advertise that it had been made at Oxford; and he had hands as carefully kept as a pretty woman’s, with manicured, filbert-shaped nails.

“You’re making her jolly smart,” he went on.  “She’ll do you credit.”

“I want she should,” retorted her ladyship, gratified and ungrammatical.

“She must give me a dance—­what?” condescended the gilded youth.  “Does she speak English?”

“Yes.  So you’d better be careful what you say before her.”

Bertie telegraphed another smile to me.  I looked at the faded damask curtains; at the mantelpiece with its gilded clock and two side-pieces, Louis Seize at his worst, considered good enough for a bedroom; at the drapings of the enormous bed; at the portiere covering the door of Sir Samuel’s dressing-room; at the kaleidoscopic claret-and-blue figures on the carpet; in fact, at everything within reach of my eyes except Mr. Herbert Stokes.

“I’ve nothing to say that she can’t hear,” said he, virtuously.  “I only wanted to know if you’d like to see the gardens?  The marquise sent me to ask.  Several people who haven’t been here before are goin’.  It’s a lot warmer this mornin’, so you won’t freeze.”

Lady Turnour said that she would go, and ordered me to find her hat and coat.  As I turned to get them, Bertie smiled at me again, and threw me a last glance as he followed my mistress out of the room.

I begin to be afraid there is an innate vanity in me which nothing can thoroughly eradicate without tearing me up by the roots; for when I was ready to alter that red dress, instead of trying to make it look as ridiculous as possible, something forced me to do my best, to study fitness and becomingness.  I do hope this is self-respect and not vanity; but to hope that is, I fear, like believing in a thing which you know isn’t true.