“Much the same as usual; he seemed rather bored.”

Lady Cynthia had led her guest away from the fireside, where Gwendolen Cairns was burbling to Asako.

Geoffrey could feel the searchlight of her judicial eye upon him, and a sensation like the pause when a great man enters a room.  Something essential was going to invade the commonplace talk.

“Captain Barrington, your coming here just now is most providential.  Reggie Forsyth is not bored at all, far from it.”

“I thought he would like the country,” said Geoffrey guardedly.

“He doesn’t like the country.  Why should he?  But he likes somebody in the country.  Now do you understand?”

“Yes,” agreed Geoffrey, “he showed me the photograph of a half Japanese girl.  He said that she was his inspiration for local colour.”

“Exactly, and she’s turning his brain yellow,” snapped Lady Cynthia, forgetting, as everybody else did, including Geoffrey himself, that the same criticism might apply to Asako.  However, Geoffrey was becoming more sensitive of late.  He blushed a little and fidgeted, but he answered,—­

“Reggie has always been easily inflammable.”

“Oh, in England, perhaps, it’s good for a boy’s education; but out here, Captain Barrington, it is different.  I have lived for a long time East of Suez; and I know the danger of these love episodes in countries where there is nothing else to do, nothing else to talk about.  I am a gossip myself; so I know the harm gossip can do.”

“But is it so serious, Lady Cynthia?  Reggie rather laughed about it to me.  He said, ‘I am in love always—­and never!’”

“She is a dangerous young lady,” said the Ambassadress.  “Two years ago a young business man out here was engaged to be married to her.  In the autumn his body was washed ashore near Yokohama.  He had been bathing imprudently, and yet he was a good swimmer Last year two officers attached to the Embassy fought a duel, and one was badly wounded.  It was turned into an accident of course; but they were both admirers of hers.  This year it is Reggie’s turn.  And Reggie is a man with a great future.  It would be a shame to lose him.”

“Lady Cynthia, aren’t you being rather pessimistic?  Besides, what can I do?”

“Anything, everything!  Eat with him, drink with him, play cards with him, go to the dogs with him—­no, what a pity you are married!  But, even so, it’s better than nothing.  Play tennis with him; take him to the top of Fujiyama.  I can do nothing with him.  He flouts me publicly.  The old man can give him an official scolding; and Reginald will just mimic him for the benefit of the Chancery.  I can hear them laughing all the way from here when Reggie is doing what he calls one of his ‘stunts’.  But you—­why, he can see in your face the whole of London, the London which he respects and appreciates in spite of his cosmopolitan airs.  He can see himself introducing Miss Yae Smith in Lady Everington’s drawing-room as Mrs. Forsyth.”