back in his chair and his hot eyes challenged her
to call him a dirty Jew.

Selincourt caught his last remark and looked him up and down with
a twinkling glance. He no longer wondered why Lawrence had spent
his summer in the tents of Kedar--so differently do brothers
look on their own and other men's sisters. But he knew men and
things pretty well, and at a moment when Laura was speaking to
Isabel he looked straight at Lawrence and touched his glass with
a murmured, "Go slow, old man." The elder man had seen instantly
what neither Mrs. Clowes nor Isabel had any notion of, that under
his easy manner Hyde's nerves were all on edge. Lawrence started
and stared at him, half offended: but after a moment his good
sense extorted a grudging "Thanks." It warned him to be grateful
for the hint, and he took it: a second glass of champagne that
night would infallibly have gone to his head.

A darkened theatre, fantastically decorated in scarlet and
silver: a French orchestra already playing a delicate prelude: a
lively audience--a typical "Moor" audience--agreeably ready to
be piqued and scandalized as well as amused.

All the plays Isabel had ever seen were Salisbury matinees of
"As You Like It" and "Julius Caesar." It was not by chance that
Hyde introduced her tonight to this filigree comedy, so cynical
under its glittering dialogue. He could find no swifter way to
present to her le monde ou l'on s'amuse in all its refined and
defiant charm. He liked to watch her laugh, he laughed himself
and gave a languid clap or two when Madeleine Wild made one of
her famous entries, but his main interest was in his plan of
campaign.

Yet chance can never he counted out. When the lights went up
after the first act Lawrence found himself looking directly
across the rather small and narrow proscenium at a lady in the
opposite box. Who the devil was it?--The devil, with a
vengeance! It was Mrs. Cleve.

CHAPTER XIV

Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with
an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less
than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom
she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of
Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel:
apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her
cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion
and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued betwe