Falloden looked round, while fanning his partner.  But there was no need to look.  From the moment she entered the room, he had been aware of every movement of the girl in black.

“I suppose you mean Lady Constance Bledlow.”

The lady beside him raised her eyebrows in excited surprise.

“Then they’re not sham!  But how ridiculous that an unmarried girl should wear them!  Yes they are—­the Risborough pearls!  I saw them once, before I married, on Lady Risborough, at a gorgeous party at the Palazzo Farnese.  Well, I hope that girl’s got a trustworthy maid!”

“I dare say Lady Constance values them most because they belonged to her mother!” said Falloden drily.

The lady sitting beside him laughed, and tapped him on the arm.

“Sentimentalist!  Don’t you know that girls nowadays—­babes in the schoolroom—­know the value of everything?  Who is she staying with?”

Falloden briefly explained and tried to change the subject.  But Mrs. Glendower could not be persuaded to leave it.  She was one of the reigning beauties of the moment, well acquainted with the Falloden family, and accustomed since his Eton days to lay violent hands on Douglas whenever they met.  She and her husband had lately agreed to live apart, and she was now pursuing amusement wherever it was to be had.  A certain Magdalen athlete was at the moment her particular friend, and she had brought down a sister to keep her in countenance.  She had no intention, indeed, of making scandal, and Douglas Falloden was a convenient string to her bow.

Falloden was quite aware of the situation.  But it suited him to dance with Mrs. Glendower, and to dance with her a great deal.  He and Constance exchanged greetings; he went through the form of asking her to dance, knowing very well that she would refuse him; and then, for the rest of the evening, when he was not dancing with Mrs. Glendower, he was standing about, “giving himself airs,” as Alice repeated to her mother, and keeping a sombre watch on Constance.

“My dear—­what has happened to Connie!” said Mrs. Hooper to Alice in bewilderment.  Lord Meyrick had just good-naturedly taken Aunt Ellen into supper, brought her back to the ballroom, and bowed himself off, bursting with conscious virtue, and saying to himself that Constance Bledlow must now give him at least two more dances.

Mrs. Hooper had found Alice sitting solitary, and rather drooping.  Nobody had offered her supper; Herbert Pryce was not at the ball; her other friends had not showed her any particular attention, and her prettiness had dribbled away, like a bright colour washed out by rain.  Her mother could not bear to see her—­and then to look at Connie across the room, surrounded by all those silly young men, and wearing the astonishing jewels that were the talk of the ball, and had only been revealed to Mrs. Hooper’s bewildered gaze, when the girl threw off her wraps in the cloak-room.