What wicked things you say, Colonel Lightmark," she added demurely.
"Who is that stately person in the dark figured silk, with a
cinque-cento ruff? Isn't it Lady Garnett's niece?"

"Yes, that's Miss Masters," said the Colonel, "and I suppose that's
Lady Garnett with her. I don't think I've ever met Lady Garnett,
though I've often heard of her. What is her dress--whom is she
intended to represent? I don't see how the dickens one's expected to
know, but you're so clever."

"Oh, she's dressed as--as Lady Garnett! What a lot of people--_real_
people, you know--there are here to-night! Dear me, there's the
music again already. I believe I've got to dance this time. I do
hope my partner's dress won't clash with mine too awfully. That's
the worst of fancy dress balls; they really ought to be
stage-managed by a painter, and the period ought to be limited.
One's never safe. Our dance, Mr. Copal? Number six? Yes, I think it
must be! A polka? Then we'll waltz!"

And the Colonel, who was not a dancing man, was left in not
unwelcome solitude to reflect somewhat ponderously on the advantages
of possessing a nephew and niece young enough, brilliant enough, and
rich enough--though that was partly _his_ affair--to cultivate the
very pink and perfection of smart society. He regarded Dick in the
light of a profitable investment.

When the young people, so to speak, came to the rescue of the
avuncular hulk, it was already beginning to drift into the corner of
the harbour devoted to derelicts.

The friends who had developed about his path in such flattering
numbers when he came home from India, and retired, with a
newly-acquired fortune and a vague halo of military distinction
about his person, into the ranks of the half-paid, were beginning to
find him rather old and, frankly, a considerable bore; but the
timely benevolence which he had extended to his nephew was, it
appeared, to have its reward in this world in the shape of a kind of
reflected rejuvenescence, a temporary respite from the limbo of (how
he hated the word!) fogeydom.

When Dick married, his uncle was already settling down in a narrow
groove among the people of yesterday; now he felt that he had once
more established his foothold among the people of to-day.

Presently he noticed that Lady Dulminster had arrived, and he made
his way across the room to meet her with a quite youthful
bashfulness, cannoning apologetically against Romeos and
Marguerites, hoping that she