“And do you still hate everything that wasn’t made last week?”

“Oh no!  We only hate what cheats or oppresses the people.”

“The people?” echoed Diana, with an involuntary lift of the eyebrows, and she looked round the immense hall, with its costly furniture, its glaring electric lights, and the band of bad fresco which ran round its lower walls.

Oliver Marsham reddened a little; then said: 

“I see my cousin Miss Drake.  May I introduce her?—­Alicia!”

A young lady had entered, from a curtained archway dividing the hall from a passage beyond.  She paused a moment examining the company.  The dark curtain behind her made an effective background for the brilliance of her hair, dress, and complexion, of which fact—­such at least was Diana’s instant impression—­she was most composedly aware.  At least she lingered a few leisurely seconds, till everybody in the hall had had the opportunity of marking her entrance.  Then beckoned by Oliver Marsham, she moved toward Diana.

“How do you do?  I suppose you’ve had a long drive?  Don’t you hate driving?”

And without waiting for an answer, she turned affectedly away, and took a place at the tea-table where room had been made for her by two young men.  Reaching out a white hand, she chose a cake, and began to nibble it slowly, her elbows resting on the table, the ruffles of white lace falling back from her bare and rounded arms.  Her look meanwhile, half absent, half audacious, seemed to wander round the persons near, as though she saw them, without taking any real account of them.

“What have you been doing, Alicia, all this time?” said Marsham, as he handed her a cup of tea.

“Dressing.”

An incredulous shout from the table.

“Since lunch!”

Miss Drake nodded.  Lady Lucy put in an explanatory remark about a “dressmaker from town,” but was not heard.  The table was engaged in watching the new-comer.

“May we congratulate you on the result?” said Mr. Ferrier, putting up his eye-glass.

“If you like,” said Miss Drake, indifferently, still gently munching at her cake.  Then suddenly she smiled—­a glittering infectious smile, to which unconsciously all the faces near her responded.  “I have been reading the book you lent me!” she said, addressing Mr. Ferrier.

“Well?”

“I’m too stupid—­I can’t understand it.”

Mr. Ferrier laughed.

“I’m afraid that excuse won’t do, Miss Alicia.  You must find another.”

She was silent a moment, finished her cake, then took some grapes, and began to play with them in the same conscious provocative way—­till at last she turned upon her immediate neighbor, a young barrister with a broad boyish face.

“Well, I wonder whether you’d mind?”

“Mind what?”

“If your father had done something shocking—­forged—­or murdered—­or done something of that kind—­supposing, of course, he were dead.”