In fact, so gay was she, so full of life and high spirits, that she appeared to have forgotten her lover completely, thereby giving the Thistleton family cause to congratulate themselves in the seclusion of their bedrooms.

“I told you so, Mamma,” had said Ellen, this night of the full moon, as she had pondered before the mirror upon the effect a headache-bandeau in the shape of a royal asp would have upon a certain retired colonel who seemed inclined to find solace for his long widowhood en secondes noces.  “She evidently did not see Mr. Kelham and Sybil on the sand-bank, and I honestly do not think she cares for him a bit.”

“No,” broke in Berenice, whose hair clung to her head like wet seaweed to a rock; “I am sure she does not.  Do you think if Ambrose had—­had courted me and then neglected me, that I could have danced and laughed and------”

“Well, I’m thankful,” broke in Mamma.   “Looking after any girl as
beautiful and-----”

“Erratic,” supplied Ellen, who had decided on the headache-bandeau.

“--erratic as Damaris, is certainly no------”

“Sinecure,” supplied Berenice, who, in the fervour of her affection for her herculean cleric, gave no thought to such trifles as head-dresses, and not much to the rest of her attire.

Giving a final pat to her offsprings’ toilettes, Mamma shepherded them downstairs, tapping at Damaris’s door as she passed, inviting her to join them in the Winter-Garden, where they were going to sit and look at the dresses, and watch the arrival of the guests from the less select hotels.

Damaris looked radiantly beautiful as she stood for a moment at the window of her godmother’s sitting-room, into which she had gone to fetch a fan.

True, her eyes looked over-big in the violet shadows that surrounded them, and her cheek and collar-bones were unduly prominent, but then, however well you hide the fox of uncertainty which tears at the vitals of your common sense and sense of humour, you cannot completely hide the outward signs of the inner agony which tortures you.

“You’re a perfect picture, dearie!” said Jane Coop as she tied the ribbons of the simple, heelless, white leather shoes in which the girl always preferred to dance.  “Let me look at you just once more.”

Like a slender lily Damaris stood under the electric light.  The soft white satin seemed to cling like a sheath to the slender, beautiful figure; her arms were bare; the bodice cut low enough to show her gleaming shoulders.  She was dazzling, virginal, remote as she stood quite still, looking down at her maid.

Her eyes looked intensely black; her red hair flamed; she wore no jewels save for a massive jewelled brooch in the shape of a hawk which glittered in the bodice just above the waist-belt where, thinking the bodice too low, she had pinned it hastily.

“I don’t like that brooch, dearie,” said the maid.  “It’s a waste of money, I think, to buy these heathen things.  But there! you and her grace know best.  And don’t forget your cloak, darling; it’s too chilly to sit out in the grounds without one, Egypt or no Egypt.  I’ll be real glad when we run into Waterloo station, that I shall.”