“And what are you doing now, Jimmy?” Mrs. Wyatt asked him.  “I suppose I may still call you Jimmy?” she said playfully.

“Rather! please do!  I’m not doing anything, as a matter of fact,” Challoner explained rather vaguely.  “I’ve got rooms in the Temple, and the great Horatio sends me a quarterly allowance, and expects me not to live beyond it.”  He made a little grimace.  “You remember my brother Horace, of course!”

“Of course I do!  Is he still abroad?”

“Yes, he’ll never come back now; not that I want him to,” Jimmy hastened to add, with one of those little inward qualms that shook him whenever he thought of his brother, and what that brother would say when he knew that he was shortly to be asked to accept Cynthia Farrow as a sister-in-law.

The great Horatio, as Jimmy disrespectfully called the head of his family, loathed the stage.  It was his one dread that some day the blueness of his blood might run the risk of taint by being even remotely connected with one of its members.

“He’s not married, of course?” Mrs. Wyatt asked.

Challoner chuckled.  “Married!  Good Lord, no!” He leaned a little forward to look at Christine.

“And you?” he asked.  “Has the perfect man come along yet?”

It had been an old joke of his in the far away days, that Christine would never marry until she found a perfect man.  She had always had such quaintly romantic fancies behind the seriousness of her beautiful brown eyes.

She flushed now, shaking her head.  “And you?” she asked.  “Are you married?”

Challoner said “No” very quickly.  He wondered whether he ought to tell them about Cynthia.  The thought reminded him of his promise to go to her after the first act.  He rose hastily to his feet.

“I quite forgot.  I’ve got an appointment.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ll come back, if I may.”

He bowed himself off.  Christine’s beautiful eyes followed him wistfully.

“I never thought he’d be half so good-looking when he grew up,” she said.  “And yet somehow he hasn’t altered much, has he?”

“He hasn’t altered in manner in the least,” Mrs. Wyatt laughed.  “Fancy him remembering about your perfect man, Christine?  We must ask him to dinner one night while we are in London.  How funny, meeting him like this.  I always liked him so much.  I wonder he hasn’t got married, though—­a charming boy like that!” But her voice sounded as if she were rather pleased to find Challoner still a bachelor.

“I don’t know why he should be married,” Christine said.  “He’s not very old—­only twenty-seven, mother.”

“Is that all?  Yes, I suppose he is—­the time goes so quickly.”

Challoner, meanwhile, had raced off to the back of the stage.  He could not imagine how on earth he had even for one second forgotten his appointment.  He was flushed with remorse and eagerness when he reached Cynthia’s room.