Mr. Rickman’s earnest and chivalrous endeavour to forestall her caused a rug to slide under his feet.  It slid, and Mr. Rickman with it, for quite a considerable distance; and though Mr. Rickman, indeed, preserved the erect attitude by a series of complicated movements (a superb triumph of muscular ingenuity, but somewhat curious and fantastic as a spectacle), his coffee cup flung itself violently on its side, and poured out its contents at the lady’s feet.

He looked at Miss Harden.  She was smiling; for who wouldn’t have smiled?  But her smile became almost tender in her perception of his distress.

Miss Palliser continued to talk.

“Ah,” said Miss Palliser, “I was waiting for that to happen.  I’ve been wondering which of us would do it first.  I rather thought it would be me; but for pure, delightful unexpectedness, give me a parquet floor.  I wouldn’t mop it up with my pocket handkerchief, if I were you.”

“No—­please—­it doesn’t matter.  It happens every day.”

“And it puts a visitor on an agreeable footing at once.  You can’t keep up any stiffness or formality, when what you took for a drawing-room turns itself into a skating rink.”

“Quite so,” said Rickman, “and if you fall, it breaks the ice.”  He was entering shyly into her humour.  “I’m afraid my be-h-haviour wasn’t quite so h-happy and spontaneous as it might have been.”

“I assure you it was extremely naive and natural, as far as it went,” said Kitty, laughing.

“I think you were very clever to keep your balance,” said Lucia.

“Too clever by half.  If you’d been a really genial person, Mr. Rickman, you’d have lost it.”

Thus lightly did they cover his confusion, thus adroitly turn the malignant hand of circumstance.

“Kitty,” said Lucia, “I don’t want to hurry you, but it’s past nine, and you’ll have to hurry if you don’t want to be late.”

“But I do want to be late.  I mean to be late.  I can’t eat sandwiches for more than two hours.”

And Kitty flung herself on her settee again in crosslegged, unpremeditated ease, and there she conversed with Mr. Rickman as if she had known him all her life.  Kitty was amused at last.

So was Mr. Rickman.  He found himself answering with appropriate light-heartedness; he heard himself laughing in the manner of one infinitely at ease.  It was impossible to be anything else in Kitty Palliser’s society.  He was, in fact, surprised.  Though it was only by immense expenditure of thought and effort that he managed to secure the elusive aspirate, still he secured it.  Never for a moment did he allow himself to be cheated into the monstrous belief that its absence was, or could be unperceived.

But though he was grateful to Miss Palliser, he wished all the time that she would go.  At last she rose and drew her fur-collared cloak about her with a slow, reluctant air.

“Well, I suppose I must be off.  I shall be back before eleven, Lucy.  Good-night, Mr. Rickman, if I don’t see you again.”