“I should think it might be as well,” assented the other, with a sniff.  “But she would hardly be here!”

“She is really her governess, a very ill-bred and rude young person,” said Mrs. Nailor.

The other sighed.

“Society is getting so democratic now, one might say, so mixed, that there is no telling whom one may meet nowadays.”

“No, indeed,” pursued Mrs. Nailor.  “I do not at all approve of governesses and such persons being invited out.  I think the English way much the better.  There the governess never dreams of coming to the table except to luncheon, and her friends are the housekeeper and the butler.”

Keith, wearied of the banalities at his ear, crossed over to where Mrs. Wentworth stood a little apart from the other ladies.  One or two men were talking to her.  She was evidently pleased to see him.  She talked volubly, and with just that pitch in her voice that betrays a subcurrent of excitement.

From time to time she glanced about her, appearing to Keith to search the faces of the other women.  Keith wondered if it were a fancy of his that they were holding a little aloof from her.  Presently Mrs. Nailor came up and spoke to her.

Keith backed away a little, and found himself mixed up with the train of a lady behind him, a dainty thing of white muslin.

He apologized in some confusion, and turning, found himself looking into Lois Huntington’s eyes.  For a bare moment he was in a sort of maze.  Then the expression in her face dispelled it.  She held out her hand, and he clasped it; and before he had withdrawn his eyes from hers, he knew that his peace was made, and Mrs. Wickersham’s drawing-room had become another place.  This, then, was what Alice Lancaster meant when she spoke of the peacemakers.

“It does not in the least matter about the dress, I assure you,” she said in reply to his apology.  “My dressmaker, Lois Huntington, can repair it so that you will not know it has been torn.  It was only a ruse of mine to attract your attention.”  She was trying to speak lightly.  “I thought you were not going to speak to me at all.  It seems to be a way you have of treating your old friends—­your oldest friends,” she laughed.

“Oh, the insolence of youth!” said Keith, wishing to keep away from a serious subject.  “Let us settle this question of age here and now.  I say you are seven years old.”

“You are a Bourbon,” she said; “you neither forget nor learn.  Look at me.  How old do I look?”

“Seven—­”

“No.  Look.”

“I am looking-would I were Argus!  You look like—­perpetual Youth.”

And she did.  She was dressed in pure white.  Her dark eyes were soft and gentle, yet with mischief lurking in them, and her straight brows, almost black, added to their lustre.  Her dark hair was brushed back from her white forehead, and as she turned, Keith noted again, as he had done the first time he met her, the fine profile and the beautiful lines of her round throat, with the curves below it, as white as snow.  “Perpetual Youth,” he murmured.