little
inanely.

"I cannot conceive what you two have found in common," she admitted.

"Perhaps our interest in you," he replied. "By-the-bye, I have just
seen him perform a quixotic but a very fine action," Francis said. "He
stopped a carter from thrashing his horse; knocked him down, bought the
horse from him and sent it home."

She was mildly interested.

"An amiable side of my father's character which no one would suspect,"
she remarked. "The entire park of his country house at Hatch End is
given over to broken-down animals."

"I am one of those," he confessed, "who find this trait amazing."

"And I am another," she remarked coolly. "If any one settled down
seriously to try and understand my father, he would need the spectacles
of a De Quincey, the outlook of a Voltaire, and the callousness of
a Borgia. You see, he doesn't lend himself to any of the recognised
standards."

"Neither do you," he said boldly.

She looked away from him across the House, to where Sir Timothy was
talking to a man and woman in one of the ground-floor boxes. Francis
recognised them with some surprise--an agricultural Duke and his
daughter, Lady Cynthia Milton, one of the most, beautiful and famous
young women in London.

"Your father goes far afield for his friends," Francis remarked.

"My father has no friends," she replied. "He has many acquaintances. I
doubt whether he has a single confidant. I expect Cynthia is trying to
persuade him to invite her to his next party at The Walled House."

"I should think she would fail, won't she?" he asked.

"Why should you think that?"

Francis shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Your father's entertainments have the reputation of being somewhat
unique," he remarked. "You do not, by-the-bye, attend them yourself."

"You must remember that I have had very few opportunities so far," she
observed. "Besides, Cynthia has tastes which I do not share."

"As, for instance?"

"She goes to the National Sporting Club. She once travelled, I know,
over a hundred miles to go to a bull fight."

"On the whole," Francis said, "I am glad that you do not share her
tastes."

"You know her?" Margaret enquired.

"Indifferently well," Francis replied. "I knew her when she was a child,
and we seem to come together every now and then at long intervals. As a
debutante she was charming. Lately it seems to me that she has got into
the wrong set."

"What do you call the wrong set?"

He hesitated for a