Delorme hesitated a moment, then threw a provocative look at his companion, the look of the alien to whom English assumptions are sometimes intolerable.

“Pretty mixed—­your stocks—­some of them—­by now!”

“Not ours.  You’d find, if you looked into it, that we’ve descended very straight.  There’s been no carelessness.”

Delorme threw up his hands.

“Good heavens!  Carelessness, as you call it, is the only hope for a family nowadays.  A strong blood—­that’s what you want—­a blood that will stand this modern life—­and you’ll never get that by mating in and in.  Ah! here come the others.”

They turned, and saw a stream of people coming round the corner of the house.  The rector and Mrs. Deacon—­the gold cross on the rector’s waistcoat shining in the diffused light.  Lady Barbara Woolson, the other uninvited guest, Victoria’s first cousin; a young man in a dinner jacket and black tie walking with Lady Tatham; a Madonnalike woman in black, hand in hand with a tall schoolboy; and two elderly gentlemen.

But in front—­some little way in front—­there walked a pair for whom all the rest appeared to be mere escort and attendance; so vivid, so charged with meaning they seemed, among the summer flowers, and under the summer sky.

A slender girl in white, and a tall youth looking down upon her, treading the grass just slightly in advance of her, with a happy deference, as though he led in the fairy queen.  So delicate were her proportions, so bright her hair, and so compelling the charm that floated round her, that Delorme, dropping his cigarette, hastily put up his eyeglasses, and fell into his native tongue.

“Sapristi!—­quelle petite fee avez-vous la?”

“My sister-in-law talked of some neighbours—­”

“Mais elle entre en reine!  My dear fellow, it looks dangerous.”

Gerald pulled his moustaches, looking hard at the advancing pair.

“A pretty little minx—­I must have it out with Victoria.”  But his tone was doubtful.  It was not easy to have things out with Victoria.

* * * * *

The dinner under the loggia went gaily.  Not many courses; much fruit; a shimmer of tea-roses before the guests; and the scent of roses blowing in from the garden outside.

Victoria had Delorme on her right, and Lydia sat next the great man.  Tatham could only glance at her from afar.  On his right, he had his cousin, Lady Barbara, whom he cordially disliked.  Her yearly visit, always fixed and announced by herself, was a time of trial both for him and his mother, but they endured it out of a sentimental and probably mistaken belief that the late Lord Tatham had—­in her youth—­borne her a cousinly affection.  Lady Barbara was a committee-woman, indefatigable, and indiscriminate.  She lived and gloried in a chronic state of overwork, for which no one but herself saw the necessity.  Her conversation about it