Mr. Wingate
has promised to let me try it in the country next week."

"So my Wolseley is to be scrapped?" Phipps asked, under his breath.

She looked at him pleasantly enough but with a dangerous light in her
eyes.

"Have you a Wolseley?" she murmured. "Oh, yes, I remember! You offered to
send it around to take me shopping."

"I sent it around three mornings," he replied. "You did not use it once.
You did not even open the note I left inside."

"I am not very fond of using other people's cars," she said.

"It need not be another person's car unless you like," he muttered.

She looked at him for a moment thoughtfully. Phipps was a man of brass,
without sensitiveness or sensibility. Nevertheless, he flushed a little.
Just then dinner was announced and Lady Amesbury bustled once more into
the midst of her guests.

"My dears," she told them all, "I've forgotten who takes anybody down!
Scrap along as you are, and you'll find the cards in your places
downstairs. Pick up any one you like. Not you, sir," she added, turning
to Wingate. "You're going to take me. I want to hear all the latest New
York gossip. And--lean down, please--are you really trying to flirt with
Josephine Dredlinton? Don't disturb her unless you're in earnest. She's
got a horrible husband."

"I admire Lady Dredlinton more than any woman I know," Wingate answered.
"One does not flirt with the woman one really cares for."

"Hoity-toity!" Lady Amesbury exclaimed. "That's the real divorce-court
tone. There was a young man---I don't know how many years ago--who used
to talk like that to me at the time Amesbury was Ambassador at Madrid and
took up with that Lola de Mendoza woman. Neither affair came to anything,
though. Amesbury got tired of Spain, and my young man married a rich
grocer's daughter. Still, I recognise the tone. Here we all are. Now you
play a sort of hunt-the-slipper game, looking for your places, all of
you. I know mine, thank God! Now let's pray to Heaven the soup's hot!
And don't any one talk to me while I'm eating it. The present generation
are shocking soup eaters."

Wingate found Josephine on his other side and was happy. Phipps was just
across the table. His hostess proceeded to give the latter some of her
attention.

"Mr. Phipps," she said, "they tell me you've taken that scoundrel of a
nephew of mine--Dredlinton--into your business, whatever it is. He won't
do you any good, you know."

"I'm very sorry to hear that," Phipps