“Ronnie, oh I don’t count him,” said Joan gaily; “he’s just a boy who looks nice and eats asparagus.  I hear he’s getting to play the piano really well.  Such a pity.  He will grow fat; musicians always do, and it will ruin him.  I speak feelingly because I’m gravitating towards plumpness myself.  The Divine Architect turns us out fearfully and wonderfully built, and the result is charming to the eye, and then He adds another chin and two or three extra inches round the waist, and the effect is ruined.  Fortunately you can always find another Ronnie when this one grows fat and uninteresting; the supply of boys who look nice and eat asparagus is unlimited.  Hullo, Mr. Storre, we were all talking about you.”

“Nothing very damaging, I hope?” said Ronnie, who had just entered the room.

“No, we were merely deciding that, whatever you may do with your life, your chin must remain single.  When one’s chin begins to lead a double life one’s own opportunities for depravity are insensibly narrowed.  You needn’t tell me that you haven’t any hankerings after depravity; people with your coloured eyes and hair are always depraved.”

“Let me introduce you to my husband, Ronnie,” said Cicely, “and then let’s go and begin lunch.”

“You two must almost feel as if you were honeymooning again,” said Joan as they sat down; “you must have quite forgotten each other’s tastes and peculiarities since you last met.  Old Emily Fronding was talking about you yesterday, when I mentioned that Murrey was expected home; ’curious sort of marriage tie,’ she said, in that stupid staring way of hers, ’when husband and wife spend most of their time in different continents.  I don’t call it marriage at all.’  ‘Nonsense,’ I said, ’it’s the best way of doing things.  The Yeovils will be a united and devoted couple long after heaps of their married contemporaries have trundled through the Divorce Court.’  I forgot at the moment that her youngest girl had divorced her husband last year, and that her second girl is rumoured to be contemplating a similar step.  One can’t remember everything.”

Joan Mardle was remarkable for being able to remember the smallest details in the family lives of two or three hundred acquaintances.

From personal matters she went with a bound to the political small talk of the moment.

“The Official Declaration as to the House of Lords is out at last,” she said; “I bought a paper just before coming here, but I left it in the Tube.  All existing titles are to lapse if three successive holders, including the present ones, fail to take the oath of allegiance.”

“Have any taken it up to the present?” asked Yeovil.

“Only about nineteen, so far, and none of them representing very leading families; of course others will come in gradually, as the change of Dynasty becomes more and more an accepted fact, and of course there will be lots of new creations to fill up the gaps.  I hear for certain that Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary labours.  He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, for use in schools you know, and he’s bringing out a popular Life of Frederick the Great—­at least he hopes it will be popular.”