Rickman smiled even while he sympathized.  “Yes, I daresay.  I’m sorry, old man; but if I were you I wouldn’t be too down in the mouth.  It’s not worth it—­I mean; after all, there are other things besides women in the world.  It wouldn’t be a bad place even if there weren’t any women in it.  Life is good,” said the engaged man.  “You had better dress for dinner.”  He could give no richer consolation without seeming to depreciate the unique value of Flossie.  As for Spinks’s present determination, he thought it decidedly risky for Spinks; but if Spinks enjoyed balancing himself in this way on the edge of perdition it was no business of his.

As it happened, the event seemed to prove that Spinks knew very well what he was about.  The callow youth had evidently hit on the right treatment for his own disease.  In one point, however, his modesty had deceived him.  His presence was far from being a matter of indifference to Flossie.  A rejected lover is useful in so many ways.  It may be a triumph to make one man supremely happy; but the effect is considerably heightened if you have at the same time made another man supremely wretched.  Flossie found that the spectacle of young Sidney’s dejection restored all its first fresh piquancy to her engagement.  At Tavistock Place he more than justified his existence.  True, he did not remain depressed for very long, and there was something not altogether flattering in the high rebound of his elastic youth; but, as Miss Bishop was careful to point out, his joyous presence would have a most salutary effect in disturbing that prosaic sense of security in which gentlemen’s affections have been known to sleep.

But Spinks was destined to serve the object of his infatuation in yet another way.

It was in the second spring after Rickman’s engagement.  Flossie and Ada were in the drawing-room one half hour before dinner, putting their heads together over a new fashion-book.

“Shouldn’t wonder,” said Miss Bishop, “if you saw me coming out in one of these Gloriana coats this spring.  I shall get a fawn.  Fawn’s my colour.”

“I must say I love blue.  I think I’m almost mad about blue; any shade of blue, I don’t care what it is.  I know I can’t go wrong about a colour.  But then there’s the style—­” Flossie’s fingers turned over the pages with soft lingering touches, while her face expressed the gravest hesitation.  “Keith likes me best in these stiff tailor-made things; but I can’t bear them.  I like more of a fancy style.”

“I see you do,” said Miss Bishop solemnly.

“Yes, that’s because she’s a bit of a fancy article herself,” murmured a voice from the back drawing-room, where Mr. Spinks had concealed himself behind a curtain, and now listened with a voluptuous sense of unlawful initiation.

“I sy, we shall have to stop, if he will keep on listening that wy.”

“Don’t stop, please, Miss Ada.  There, I’ve got my fingers in my ears.  On my honour, I have.  You can talk as many secrets as you like now.  I can’t hear a word.”