“And now,” she said in a significant tone and with a glance full of meaning, “now I suppose you young people have lots to talk about, and will forgive me if I run away.”

And the silken draperies swept themselves across the floor and the door closed softly upon her Grace.

Ethel lay back in a low, lounging chair with a big ostrich feather fan in her hand, and she looked up expectantly into her lover’s face.  There was nothing else for it, and he took the plunge valiantly—­and with precisely the correct amount of maidenly hesitancy, Lady Ethel named a day for their marriage.  And then—­somehow there seemed nothing more to be said; each sat silent.

Sir John felt rather than saw his companion yawn behind her fan, and realised desperately that he must break the silence.

“Ethel,” he said gently; “I am old compared with yourself, and grave and sad even beyond my years; are you sure I can make your future happy?”

She looked at him with a good deal of surprise, and a frown puckered her smooth brow.

“Why not?  Why should we wish for rhapsodies and commonplace love-making?  We can leave all that to the Chloes and Daphnes of a by-gone age.  It would be boring to the last degree.  One must take pleasure just as much as sorrow, with a certain amount of equanimity.  If there is one thing more than another that I hate, it is to be ruffled.  Emotion of any sort ages a girl so terribly.”

The sword would never wear out the scabbard so far as Lady Ethel was concerned!  He doubted if she were capable of any great depth of feeling.  But he did not say now as he would have done a week ago—­“So much the better;” he no longer felt that it was altogether desirable.

He looked at her more scrutinisingly than he had ever done before, and for the first time he told himself that the beautifully moulded mouth was hard and unloving, and that the chin spoke of self-will and an amount of resolution unusual in such a young girl.

He hastened to change the subject.

“You would like to visit Switzerland or Italy?” he asked.

“No; I don’t care for scenery much, or nature!  I like human nature best; it is much more interesting, I consider.  I should prefer Paris or Vienna.”

“Then Paris or Vienna let it be, by all means,” he hastened to reply, and Lady Ethel smiled, well pleased.

“Mamma,” said Sir John’s fiancee an hour or two later, when mother and daughter were alone.  “Do you know who Mrs. Chetwynd was?”

“My dear Ethel, it is much better that subject should not be discussed.”

“I don’t agree with you.  Since I am going to marry John it can only be right and proper that I should be made aware of every detail connected with his former marriage.”

When Lady Ethel adopted that tone, her mother knew by past experience that it was a saving of time and temper to yield.

“I only know that she was beneath him in position—­a dancer, I believe, and she ran away with someone else.  Really providential, I consider; it must have been a happy release for poor Sir John.”