This helpless disdain was the natural expression of her face, and I am sure she fell asleep with a curl of the lip.  Her scorn of men so maddened them that they could not keep away from her.  “Damn!” they said under their breath, and rushed to her.  If rumour is to be believed, Sir Harry Pippinworth proposed to her in a fury brought on by the sneer with which she had surveyed his family portraits.  I know nothing more of Sir Harry, except that she called him Pips, which seems to settle him.

“They will be calling me the round gentleman,” Tommy said ruefully to her that evening, as he strolled with her towards the lake, and indeed he was looking stout.  Mrs. Jerry did not accompany them; she wanted to be seen with her trying stepdaughter as little as possible, and Tommy’s had been the happy proposal that he should attend them alternately—­“fling away my own figure to save yours,” he had said gallantly to Mrs. Jerry.

“Do you mind?” Lady Pippinworth asked.

“I mind nothing,” he replied, “so long as I am with you.”

He had not meant to begin so near the point where they had last left off; he had meant to begin much farther back:  but an irresistible desire came over him to make sure that she really did permit him to say this sort of thing.

Her only reply was a flutter of the little fans and a most contemptuous glance.

“Alice,” said Tommy, in the old way.

“Well?”

“You don’t understand what it is to me to say Alice again.”

“Many people call me Alice.”

“But they have a right to.”

“I supposed you thought you had a right to also.”

“No,” said Tommy.  “That is why I do it.”

She strolled on, more scornful and helpless than ever.  Apparently it did not matter what one said to Lady Pippinworth; her pout kept it within the proprieties.

There was a magnificent sunset that evening, which dyed a snow-topped mountain pink.  “That is what I came all the way from London to see,” Tommy remarked, after they had gazed at it.

“I hope you feel repaid,” she said, a little tartly.

“You mistake my meaning,” he replied.  “I had heard of these wonderful sunsets, and an intense desire came over me to see you looking disdainfully at them.  Yes, I feel amply repaid.  Did you notice, Alice, or was it but a fancy of my own, that when he had seen the expression on your face the sun quite slunk away?”

“I wonder you don’t do so also,” she retorted.  She had no sense of humour, and was rather stupid; so it is no wonder that the men ran after her.

“I am more gallant than the sun,” said he.  “If I had been up there in its place, Alice, and you had been looking at me, I could never have set.”

She pouted contemptuously, which meant, I think, that she was well pleased.  Yet, though he seemed to be complimenting her, she was not sure of him.  She had never been sure of Tommy, nor, indeed, he of her, which was probably why they were so interested in each other still.