“Gillam?  Is that Mrs. Bethune’s partner?”

“Yes.  Just look at his trousers, his diamonds!  How can Mrs. Bethune stand it all?”

“Perhaps she admires it—­the diamonds at all events.”

“‘My love in his attire doth show his wit!’” quotes Marryatt, who likes to pose as a man of letters.

“‘When the age is in the wit is out,’” quotes Gower in his turn, who can never resist the longing to take the wind out of somebody’s sails; “and, after all, The Everlasting is not a youth!  No doubt his intellect is on the wane.”

“He’s a cad, poor fellow!” says one the cavalry men from the barracks at Merriton.

“Nonsense!” says the girl with him, a tall, heavy creature.  “Why, his father is a baronet.”

The cavalry man regards her with pity.  How little she knows!

“A cad is not always the son of a sweep,” says he, giving his information gently; “sometimes—­he is the son of a prince.”

“Ah! now you are being very funny,” says the girl, who thinks he is trying to be clever.

“Yes, really, isn’t he?” says Mrs. Chichester, who knows them both; she is a sort of person who always knows everybody.  Give her three days in any neighbourhood whatsoever, and she’ll post you up in all the affairs of the residents there as well as if she had dwelt amongst them since the beginning of time. You, who have lived with them for a hundred years, will be nowhere; she’ll always be able to tell you something about them you never heard before.

“Isn’t he?” says she; she is now regarding the heavy girl with suppressed, but keen, amusement.  “And to be funny in this serious age is unpardonable.  Don’t do it again, Captain Warrender, as you value your life.”

“I shan’t!” says he.  “A second attempt might be fatal!”

“How well Mr. Hescott dances!” goes on Mrs. Chichester, who admires Tom Hescott.

“True.  The very worst of us, you see, have one good point,” says Gower.

“I don’t consider Mr. Hescott the worst of you, by a long way,” returns she.

“Oh no, neither do I,” says a pretty little woman next to her, a bride of a few weeks, who, with her husband, has just come up.

“I have you on my side then, Lady Selton?” says Mrs. Chichester.

Lady Selton nods her reply.  She is panting, and fanning herself audibly.  Without the slightest ear for music, she has been plunging round the room with her husband, who is still so far infatuated as to half believe she can dance.  She is an extremely pretty woman, so one can condone his idiocy.

At this moment Hescott appears.  He goes straight to the bride.  He has been sent, indeed, by Lady Warbeck.

“Will you give me the pleasure of this dance, Lady Selton?” asks he.

“It?  What is it?” nervously.

“A waltz.”

He is smiling at her.  She has a charming figure.  Of course she can dance.  Tom Hescott would not have asked the loveliest woman in the land to waltz with him, if he knew her to be a bad dancer.