“Look at our host,” she whispered.  “What does he remind you of?”

Brooks glanced across the table, brilliant with its burden of old silver, of cut-glass and hothouse flowers.  Lord Arranmore’s face, notwithstanding his ready flow of conversation, seemed unusually still and white—­the skin drawn across the bones, even the lips pallid.  The sombreness of his costume, the glitter in his eyes, the icy coldness of his lack of coloring, though time after time he set down his wineglass empty, were curiously impressive.  Brooks looked back into her face, his eyes full of question.

“Mephistopheles,” she whispered.  “He is absolutely weird to-night.  If he sat and looked at me and we were alone I should shriek.”

Lord Arranmore lifted a glass of champagne to the level of his head and looked thoughtfully around the table.

“Come,” he said, “a toast-to ourselves.  Singly?  Collectively.  Lady Caroom, I drink to the delightful memories with which you have peopled Enton.  Sybil, may you charm society as your mother has done.  Brooks, your very good health.  May your entertainment this evening be a welcome one.

“We will drink to all those things,” Lady Caroom declared, “with enthusiasm.  But I am afraid your good wishes for Sybil are beyond any hope of realization.  She is far too honest to flourish in society.  She will probably marry a Bishop or a Cabinet Minister, and become engrossed in theology or politics.  You know how limiting that sort of thing is.  I am in deadly fear that she may become humdrum.  A woman who really studies or knows anything about anything can never be a really brilliant woman.”

“You—­”

“Oh, I pass for being intelligent because I parade my ignorance so, just as Sophie Mills is considered a paragon of morality because she is always talking about running off with one of the boys in her husband’s regiment.  It is a gigantic bluff, you know, but it comes off.  Most bluffs do come off if one is only daring enough.”

“You must tell them that up at Redcliffe,” Lord Arranmore remarked.

Sybil laughed heartily.

“Redcliffe is the one place where mother is dumb,” she declared.  “Up there they look upon her as a stupid but well-meaning person.  She is absolutely afraid to open her mouth.”

“They are so absurdly literal,” Lady Caroom sighed, helping herself to an infinitesimal portion of a wonderful savoury.  “Don’t talk about the place.  I know I shall have an attack of nerves there.”

“Mother always gets nerves if she mayn’t talk,” Sybil murmured.

“You’re an undutiful daughter,” Lady Caroom declared.  “If I do talk I never say anything, so nobody need listen unless they like.  About this entertainment, Arranmore.  Are you going to make the wineglass disappear and the apples fly about the room a la Maskelyne and Cook?  I hope our share in it consists in sitting down.”

Arranmore turned to the butler behind his chair.