He cursed her impertinence.  Apart from leaving Isabel, he did not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve:  he had forgotten her existence, and it was a shock to him to meet her again.  Good heavens, had he ever admired her?  That white blanc-mange of a woman in her ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne’s without the saying of Yvonne’s wiry slimness?  Remembering the summerhouse at Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his taste:  he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he had gone so far.—­He had not yet realized that during three months among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified itself from day to day.

But she had been his hostess.  Impossible to refuse:  and with a vexed word of apology to Laura he went out.  “Dear me, what an opulent lady!” said Laura with lifted eyebrows.  “Who’s your friend, Lulu?”

Lucian drily named her.  “Queen’s Gate, and Sundays at the Metropole.  They’re shipping people, which is where the diamond ta-ra-ras come from.  Oh yes, there’s a husband, quite a nice fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps.  No, I don’t know who the chap is she’s got with her.  Some dusky brother.  Not Cleve.”  He fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.

It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow.  Mrs. Cleve shook hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional moment.  He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier’s empty chair:  then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain, was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck.  An interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of Philippa’s personality, one would have had to be very young, or very innocent, to overlook her drift.

“Well, my darling,” said Laura, “and what do you think of Madeleine Wild?” She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve.  “Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?”

“Angelical!” said Isabel.  “And isn’t it luck for me, Royalty coming tonight?  I’ve never seen any one Royal before.  It’s one of those evenings when nothing goes wrong.”

Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world?  She prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear, Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her innocence, Laura faintly irritated:  and meanwhile Isabel through her black lashes watched, not the Duchess of Cumberland’s rubies, but those two in the opposite box.  Between it and her stretched a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval was over.  Across the semi-dark of a “Courtyard by Moonlight” it was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand and arm, and Mrs. Cleve’s fair hair and immense jewelled fan.  What were they saying to each other in this public isolation where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?