“I’m too ignorant to be—­or to laugh about it as you do....  Is it because I look a simpleton that you come to see if I really am?”

“Are you planning to punish me, Miss Seagrave?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

“Fate will, anyway, unless I am placed next you at dinner,” he said with his most reassuring smile, and rose gracefully.

“I’m going to fix it,” he added, and, pushing his way toward his hostess, disappeared in the crush.

Later young Grandcourt reappeared from the crush to take her in.  Every table seated eight, and, sure enough, as she turned involuntarily to glance at her neighbour on the right, it was Dysart’s pale face, cleanly cut as a cameo, that met her gaze.  He nodded back to her with unfeigned satisfaction at his own success.

“That’s the way to manage,” he said, “when you want a thing very much.  Isn’t it, Miss Seagrave?”

“You did not ask me whether I wanted it,” she said.

“Don’t you want me here?  If you don’t—­” His features fell and he made a pretence of rising.  His pale, beautifully sculptured face had become so fearfully serious that she coloured up quickly.

“Oh, you wouldn’t do such a thing—­now! to embarrass me.”

“Yes, I would—­I’d do anything desperate.”

But she had already caught the flash of mischief, and realising that he had been taking more or less for granted in tormenting her, looked down at her plate and presently tasted what was on it.

“I know you are not offended,” he murmured.  “Are you?”

She knew she was not, too; but she merely shrugged.  “Then why do you ask me, Mr. Dysart?”

“Because you have such pretty shoulders,” he replied seriously.

“What an idiotic reply to make!”

“Why?  Don’t you think you have?”

“What?”

“Pretty shoulders.”

“I don’t think anything about my shoulders!”

“You would if there was anything the matter with them,” he insisted.

Once or twice he turned his handsome dark gaze on her while she was dissecting her terrapin.

“They tip up a little—­at the corners, don’t they?” he inquired anxiously.  “Does it hurt?”

“Tip up?  What tips up?” she demanded.

“Your eyes.”

She swung around toward him, confused and exasperated; but no seriousness was proof against the delighted malice in Dysart’s face; and she laughed a little, and laughed again when he did.  And she thought that he was, perhaps, the handsomest man she had ever seen.  All debutantes did.

Young Grandcourt turned from the pretty, over-painted woman who, until that moment, had apparently held him interested when his food failed to monopolise his attention, and glanced heavily around at Geraldine.

All he saw was the back of her head and shoulders.  Evidently she was not missing him.  Evidently, too, she was having a very good time with Dysart.