out of the hot brightly lighted
room into the soft peace, the delicate phantasy of the colourless
moonlight.

Carteret drew back, flattening himself against the iron pillar in the
shadow, as they passed down the steps into the garden below; the women's
pale airy forms and the men's dark ones, pacing the shining paths in
groups and couples, between the flower-beds, under the flat-headed pines,
the shaggy-stemmed palms and towering eucalyptus, in and out massed banks
of blossoming shrubs and dwarf hedges of monthly roses.

Midway in the light-hearted procession came Damaris, Peregrine Ditton on
one side of her, Harry Ellice on the other. Leaving the main alley, the
trio turned along a path, running parallel to the verandah, which opened
into a circle surrounding the stone basin of a tinkling fountain,
immediately below Colonel Carteret's post of solitary observation.

Damaris carried the demi-train of her white satin gown over her arm,
thereby revealing a wealth of lace frilled petticoat, from beneath
which the toes of her high-heeled, white satin shoes stepped with a
pretty measured tread. The two boys, leaning a little towards one
another, talked across her, their voices slightly raised in argument,
not to say dispute.

"I call it rotten mean to bag my dance like that, I tell you.--Go
away?--No I swear I won't go away, won't budge one blessed inch unless
Miss Verity actually orders me to. If my dance was stolen, all the more
reason I should have her to talk to now as a sort of make-up. So you
just clear out, if you please, my good chap, and leave the field to your
elders and betters. Remove your superfluous carcass till further
notice.--Vamoose, my son, do you hear?"

This excitedly from Peregrine Ditton. They reached the fountain. Damaris
stayed her measured walk, and stood gazing at the jet of water in its
uprush and myriad sparkling fall. Ellice answered chaffingly yet with an
underlying growl; and the dispute threatened to wax warm. But the girl
heeded neither disputant, her attention rapt in watching the play of the
falling water.

Throughout the evening she had easily been chief centre of attraction,
besieged by partners. And those not only her present rival attendants or
Marshall Wace; but by Mrs. Frayling's various importations, plus Mr.
Alban Titherage--a fat, smart and very forthcoming young London
stock-broker, lately established, in company of a pretty, silly,
phthisis-stricken wife, at the Grand Hote