man on her right, evidently had better fortune; and presently Selwyn
found himself with nobody to talk to, which came as near to embarrassing
him as anything could, and which so enraged his hostess that she struck
his partner's name from her lists for ever. People were already glancing
at him askance in sly amusement or cold curiosity.

Then he did a thing which endeared him to Mrs. T. West Minster and to
her two disconsolate children.

"Mrs. Ruthven," he said, very naturally and pleasantly, "I think perhaps
we had better talk for a moment or two--if you don't mind."

She said quietly, "I don't mind," and turned with charming composure.
Every eye shifted to them, then obeyed decency or training; and the
slightest break in the gay tumult was closed up with chatter and
laughter.

"Plucky," said Sandon Craig to his fair neighbour; "but by what chance
did our unfortunate hostess do it?"

"She's usually doing it, isn't she? What occupies me," returned his
partner, "is how on earth Alixe could have thrown away that adorable man
for Jack Ruthven. Why, he is already trying to scramble into Rosamund
Fane's lap--the horrid little poodle!--always curled up on the edge of
your skirt!"

She stared at Mrs. Ruthven across the crystal reservoir brimming with
rose and ivory-tinted water-lilies.

"That girl is marked for destruction," she said slowly; "the gods have
done their work already."

But whatever Alixe had been, whatever she now was, she showed to her
little world only a pale brunette symmetry--a strange and changeless
lustre, varying as little as the moon's phases; and like that burnt-out
planet, reflecting any flame that flared until her clear, young beauty
seemed pulsating with the promise of hidden fire.

Selwyn, outwardly amiable and formal, was saying in a low voice: "My
dinner partner is quite impossible, you see; and I happen to be here as
a filler in--commanded to the presence only a few minutes ago. It's a
pardonable error; I bear no malice. But I'm sorry for you."

There was a silence; Alixe straightened her slim figure, and turned; but
young Innis, who had taken her in, had become confidential with Mrs.
Fane. As for Selwyn's partner, she probably divined his conversational
designs on her, but she merely turned her bare shoulder a trifle more
unmistakably and continued her gossip with Bradley Harmon.

Alixe broke a tiny morsel from her bread, sensible of the tension.

"I suppose," she said, as though re