“You look well, Mary,” he remarked, holding her at arms’ length critically, with the freedom of an old friend.  “You look insultingly well—­I hope you don’t mean it.”

“I am afraid I do,” laughed the girl.  “I wish I could say as much for you.”

Rainham shook his head with burlesque solemnity, and sank down with his fragile cup into the most comfortable of the Louis Quinze chairs which he could select.

“It’s delightful to be back again,” he remarked, letting his eyes wander round the familiar walls.  “I know your things by heart, Lady Garnett; there’s not one of them I could spare.  Thanks, Mary, no sugar; cream, if you please.  After all, I don’t know anyone who has such charming rooms.  Let me see if there is anything new.  Yes, those enamels; introduce me, Mary, please.  Yes, they are very nice.  By the way, I picked up some old point for you at Genoa, only I have not unpacked it yet.  But the Gustave Moreau, where is that?  Ah, I see you have shifted it over the piano.  Yes, it is exactly the same; you are all precisely the same; it’s delightful, such constancy—­delightful!  I take it as a personal compliment.  But where are all the delightful people?”

Lady Garnett smiled placidly.

“The delightful people have gone.  To tell you the truth, I am just a little glad, especially as you have dropped in from the clouds, or the Riviera di Ponente—­which is it, Philip?”

“To be frank with you, from neither.  I have it on my conscience to tell you that I have been back some days.  I wanted to come here before.”

“Ah well, so long as you have come now!” said the old lady.

“Your knock was mystifying, Philip,” put in the girl presently; “we expected nobody else but the Sylvesters, and when we heard your solitary step our hearts sank.  We thought that Charles Sylvester had taken it into his head to come by himself.”

“He is a terrible young man,” said Lady Garnett; “he is almost as limited as his mamma, and he takes himself more seriously.  When he is with his sister one can tolerate him, but alone——­”

She held up her thin wrinkled hands with a little gesture of elision, at which her expressive shoulders assisted.  She was of French extraction, the last survivor of an illustrious family; and reconciled as she had become to England—­for years she had hardly left London—­a slight and very pretty accent, and this trick of her shoulders, remained to remind people that her point of view was still essentially foreign.  Rainham, who had from his boyhood found England somewhat a prison-house, adored her for this trait.  The quaint old woman, indeed, with her smooth, well-bred voice, her elaborate complexion, her little, dignified incongruities, had always been the greatest solace to him.  She had the charm of all rococo things; she represented so much that had passed away, exhaling a sort of elegant wickedness to find a parallel to which one had to seek back to