* * * * *

Guy raced back to Grosvenor Square.  He found Lady Medlincourt playing bridge in the card-room.

“Aunt,” he said, after having greeted her guests, “I must see you at once.  Please come into the morning-room.  I have something most important to say.”

“If you dare to disturb me until I have finished this hand, I shall never speak to you again,” she declared.  “If we lose this rubber, my diamonds will have to go.”

He walked about the room, trying to conceal his impatience.  Fortunately Lady Medlincourt won the rubber, and having collected her winnings, she followed him into the morning-room.

“Well, Guy, what is it?” she said resentfully.  “I suppose you have found that child?”

“I have not only found her,” he answered, “but I have found out all about her.  Do you know whose niece she is, and whom she is staying with?”

“How should I, my dear boy?” she answered.

“Her uncle is Phineas Duge,” Guy said.  “He has given his consent to our marriage, and told me to send my lawyer to him to-morrow.”

“Bless the boy, what luck!” Lady Medlincourt exclaimed.  “Why, he’s the richest man in America.”

Guy nodded.

“I don’t care a bit,” he said, “except that it will make all you people so much more decent to Virginia.  Come along round to Claridge’s and be introduced.  There’s just time.”

The dinner-party that night was a great success.  In the middle of it Lady Medlincourt laughed softly to herself.

“I must tell you all something,” she said.  “You know Guy went to America this year to see his cousin who is out ranching.  He was so afraid that people would think he had gone out to find an American heiress—­you know we’re all disgracefully poor—­that he stayed in New York, and came back, under an assumed name.  In fact, he was only in New York for two days, for fear that some one should find him out.  And to think, Guy,” she exclaimed, “that you are going to do the conventional thing after all!”

“My dear lady,” Phineas Duge said, “the conventions in your wonderful country are not things to be trifled with.  Somehow or other they will assert themselves.  There is your nephew here trying to prove to the world that he will have nothing to do with them, and yet it will be his painful duty to receive as much of my hard-earned savings as my daughter’s dowry and Virginia’s trousseau will leave to me.  Never, until I was inveigled into Doucet’s this afternoon, did I really understand the absolute recklessness of young women who are going to marry Englishmen.”

Virginia laughed softly.

“What there is in me of extravagance,” she said, laying her hand for a moment upon his arm, “I owe to you.  Who else would have cabled to all my people to come over here for such an unimportant function as my wedding!”

Norris Vine caught his host’s eye and raised his glass.