“She wanted to play at this particular moment,” she said.  “And as she has only just arrived, it did not occur to her to come out to tea in tennis-shoes.”

“She’ll spoil the court all the same,” said the marquis.  “What clothes!  It’s amazing how girls dress now.”

“I wish I had such clothes,” answered Lady Maria, and she chuckled again.  “She’s got beautiful feet.”

“She’s got Louis Quinze heels,” returned his Lordship.

At all events, Emily Fox-Seton thought Miss Brooke seemed to intend to rather keep out of his way and to practise no delicate allurements.  When her tennis-playing was at an end, she sauntered about the lawn and terraces with her companion, tilting her parasol prettily over her shoulder, so that it formed an entrancing background to her face and head.  She seemed to be entertaining the young man.  His big laugh and the silver music of her own lighter merriment rang out a little tantalisingly.

“I wonder what Cora is saying,” said Mrs. Brooke to the group at large.  “She always makes men laugh so.”

Emily Fox-Seton felt an interest herself, the merriment sounded so attractive.  She wondered if perhaps to a man who had been so much run after a girl who took no notice of his presence and amused other men so much might not assume an agreeable aspect.

But he took more notice of Lady Agatha Slade than of any one else that evening.  She was placed next to him at dinner, and she really was radiant to look upon in palest green chiffon.  She had an exquisite little head, with soft hair piled with wondrous lightness upon it, and her long little neck swayed like the stem of a flower.  She was lovely enough to arouse in the beholder’s mind the anticipation of her being silly, but she was not silly at all.

Lady Maria commented upon that fact to Miss Fox-Seton when they met in her bedroom late that night.  Lady Maria liked to talk and be talked to for half an hour after the day was over, and Emily Fox-Seton’s admiring interest in all she said she found at once stimulating and soothing.  Her Ladyship was an old woman who indulged and inspired herself with an Epicurean wisdom.  Though she would not have stupid people about her, she did not always want very clever ones.

“They give me too much exercise,” she said.  “The epigrammatic ones keep me always jumping over fences.  Besides, I like to make all the epigrams myself.”

Emily Fox-Seton struck a happy mean, and she was a genuine admirer.  She was intelligent enough not to spoil the point of an epigram when she repeated it, and she might be relied upon to repeat it and give all the glory to its originator.  Lady Maria knew there were people who, hearing your good things, appropriated them without a scruple.  To-night she said a number of good things to Emily in summing up her guests and their characteristics.