Cicely listened to the orchestra as it jerked and strutted through a fantastic dance measure, and as she listened she looked appreciatively at the boy on the other side of the table, whose soul for the moment seemed to be in his cigarette.  Her scheme of life, knowing just what you wanted and taking good care that you got it, was justifying itself by results.  Ronnie, grown tiresome with success, had not been difficult to replace, and no one in her world had had the satisfaction of being able to condole with her on the undesirable experience of a long interregnum.  To feminine acquaintances with fewer advantages of purse and brains and looks she might figure as “that Yeovil woman,” but never had she given them justification to allude to her as “poor Cicely Yeovil.”  And Murrey, dear old soul, had cooled down, as she had hoped and wished, from his white heat of disgust at the things that she had prepared herself to accept philosophically.  A new chapter of their married life and man-and-woman friendship had opened; many a rare gallop they had had together that winter, many a cheery dinner gathering and long bridge evening in the cosy hunting-lodge.  Though he still hated the new London and held himself aloof from most of her Town set, yet he had not shown himself rigidly intolerant of the sprinkling of Teuton sportsmen who hunted and shot down in his part of the country.

The orchestra finished its clicking and caracoling and was accorded a short clatter of applause.

“The Danse Macabre,” said Cicely to her companion; “one of Saint-Saens’ best known pieces.”

“Is it?” said Larry indifferently; “I’ll take your word for it.  ’Fraid I don’t know much about music.”

“You dear boy, that’s just what I like in you,” said Cicely; “you’re such a delicious young barbarian.”

“Am I?” said Larry.  “I dare say.  I suppose you know.”

Larry’s father had been a brilliantly clever man who had married a brilliantly handsome woman; the Fates had not had the least intention that Larry should take after both parents.

“The fashion of having one’s lunch in the open air has quite caught on this season,” said Cicely; “one sees everybody here on a fine day.  There is Lady Bailquist over there.  She used to be Lady Shalem you know, before her husband got the earldom—­to be more correct, before she got it for him.  I suppose she is all agog to see the great review.”

It was in fact precisely the absorbing topic of the forthcoming Boy-Scout march-past that was engaging the Countess of Bailquist’s earnest attention at the moment.

“It is going to be an historical occasion,” she was saying to Sir Leonard Pitherby (whose services to literature had up to the present received only a half-measure of recognition); “if it miscarries it will be a serious set-back for the fait accompli.  If it is a success it will be the biggest step forward in the path of reconciliation between the two races that has yet been taken.  It will mean that the younger generation is on our side—­not all, of course, but some, that is all we can expect at present, and that will be enough to work on.”