“I?  Of course not!” Piers laughed again.  “I never wished any girl engaged yet.”

“Save one,” suggested Ina, and an odd little gleam hovered behind her lashes with the words.  “Why won’t you tell me her name?  You might as well.”

“Why?” said Piers.

“I shall find it out in any case,” she assured him.  “I know already that she dwells under the Vicar’s virtuous roof, and that the worthy Dr. Tudor finds it necessary to drop in every day.  I suppose she is the nurse-cook-housekeeper of that establishment.”

“I say, how clever of you!” said Piers.

The girl laughed carelessly.  “Isn’t it?  I’ve studied her in church—­and you too, my cavalier.  I don’t believe you have ever attended so regularly before, have you?  Did she ever tell you her age?”

“Never,” said Piers.

“I wonder,” said Ina coolly.  And then rather suddenly she rose.  “Piers, if I’m a prying cat, you’re a hard-mouthed mule!  There!  Why can’t you admit that you’re in love with her?”

Piers faced her with no sign of surprise.  “Why don’t you tell me that you’re in love with Guyes?” he said.

“Because it wouldn’t be true!” She flung back her answer with a laugh that sounded unaccountably bitter.  “I have yet to meet the man who is worth the trouble.”

“Oh, really!” said Piers.  “Don’t flatter us more than you need!  I’m sorry for Guyes myself.  If he weren’t so keen on you, it’s my belief you’d like him better.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t!” Ina spoke with a touch of scorn.  “I shouldn’t like him either less or more, whatever he did.  I couldn’t.  But of course he’s extremely eligible, isn’t he?”

“Does that count with you?” said Piers curiously.

She looked at him.  “It doesn’t with you of course?” she said.

“Not in the least,” he returned with emphasis.

She laughed again, and pushed the remnants of her fan with her foot.  “It wouldn’t.  You’re so charmingly young and romantic.  Well, mind the doctor doesn’t cut you out in your absence!  He would be a much more suitable parti for her, you know, both as to age and station.  Shall we go back to the ball-room now?  I am engaged to Dick for the next dance.  I mustn’t cut him in his own house.”

It was an annual affair but quite informal—­this Boxing Night dance at the Guyes’.  Dick himself called it a survival of his schoolboy days, and it was always referred to in the neighbourhood as “Dick’s Christmas party.”  He and his mother would no more have dreamed of discontinuing the festivity than of foregoing their Christmas dinner, and the Roses of Wardenhurst were invariably invited and as invariably attended it.  Piers was not so constant a guest.  Dick had thrown him an open invitation on the hunting-field a day or two before, and Piers, having nothing better to do, had decided to present himself.