than a mere loan with regard to making Van Buren useful. He had thus
gone up in his friend's estimation, at the same time placing him under
a great and deeply felt obligation by gratifying his fancy for knowing
clever people and celebrities.

At last the friendship had culminated in Harry's suggestion of a
marriage between his young cousin, Daphne, and Van Buren. Harry felt
that if he could compass this arrangement he would at one stroke give
fortune to Daphne, freedom to himself--the child was very much in his
way in Valentia's house--and make Van Buren eternally grateful.

Harry really liked Van Buren and respected him; he regarded him as
touching, but also, at times, as a menace. A shadow sometimes came over
their friendship, the alarming shadow of the future bore. What was now
to his cynical mind screamingly funny about the American--his sensitive
delicate feelings, his high standard of morals with regard to what he
called the ladies, and illusions that one would rarely find in London in
a girl of seventeen, might some day develop into priggishness and
tediousness, and--especially--would take up too much time. For since
Harry had been intimate with Van Buren he had discovered that the
tradition of American hustling was, like most traditions, a fiction.
Americans always have time; Englishmen never. The leisurely way in which
Van Buren talked was an example of this--it was the way he thought; his
brain worked slowly. Harry and his like have no time to drawl; they have
to keep appointments.

On the evening of the Ritz dinner-party Harry was not in a particularly
good temper, and thought to himself he was rather like a Barnum as he
introduced his guests one by one to the modest millionaire, who said to
them all, "Pleased to meet you", and fixed his admiring glance with a
sentimental respect on Daphne, an undisguised admiration on Valentia,
and an almost morbid curiosity on Miss Luscombe, the first actress he
had ever met.

Miss Luscombe was a conventional, rather untidy-looking creature, very
handsome, with loose hair parted and waved over her ears, and with
apparently no design or general idea either in her dress or manner. She
varied from minute to minute from being what she thought theatrical to
appearing what she supposed to be social. She evidently hadn't settled
on her pose, always a disastrous moment for a natural woman who wishes
to be artificial. Practically she always wore evening dress except in
the eveni