“I should be charmed,” said Wharton.  “Are the frocks so adorable?”

“Adorable!  Then I may write you a note?  You don’t have your horrid Parliament that night, do you?” and she fluttered on.

“I think you don’t know my younger daughter, Mr. Wharton?” said a severe voice at his elbow.

He turned and saw an elderly matron with the usual matronly cap and careworn countenance putting forward a young thing in white, to whom he bowed with great ceremony.  The lady was the wife of a north-country magnate of very old family, and one of the most exclusive of her kind in London.  The daughter, a vision of young shyness and bloom, looked at him with frightened eyes as he leant against the wall beside her and began to talk.  She wished he would go away and let her get to the girl friend who was waiting for her and signalling to her across the room.  But in a minute or two she had forgotten to wish anything of the kind.  The mixture of audacity with a perfect self-command in the manner of her new acquaintance, that searching half-mocking look, which saw everything in detail, and was always pressing beyond the generalisations of talk and manners, the lightness and brightness of the whole aspect, of the curls, the eyes, the flexible determined mouth, these things arrested her.  She began to open her virgin heart, first in protesting against attack, then in confession, till in ten minutes her white breast was heaving under the excitement of her own temerity and Wharton knew practically all about her, her mingled pleasure and remorse in “going out,” her astonishment at the difference between the world as it was this year, and the world as it had been last, when she was still in the school-room—­her Sunday-school—­her brothers—­her ideals—­for she was a little nun at heart—­her favourite clergyman—­and all the rest of it.

“I say, Wharton, come and dine, will you, Thursday, at the House—­small party—­meet in my room?”

So said one of the party whips, from behind into his ear.  The speaker was a popular young aristocrat who in the preceding year had treated the member for West Brookshire with chilliness.  Wharton turned—­to consider a moment—­then gave a smiling assent.

“All right!” said the other, withdrawing his hand from Wharton’s shoulder—­“good-night!—­two more of these beastly crushes to fight through till I can get to my bed, worse luck!  Are any of your fellows here to-night?”

Wharton shook his head.

“Too austere, I suppose?”

“A question of dress coats, I should think,” said Wharton, drily.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“And this calls itself a party gathering—­in a radical and democratic house—­what a farce it all is!”

“Agreed! good-night.”

And Wharton moved on, just catching as he did so the eyes of his new girl acquaintance looking back at him from a distant door.  Their shy owner withdrew them instantly, coloured, and passed out of sight.