A constant eddying swirl was animating the multitude.  Whenever the mass tended to congeal, something always seemed to stir it up again.  This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her guests moving.  From the moment when the room began to fill till the moment when it began to empty she did not cease to plough her way to and fro, in a manner equally reminiscent of a hawk swooping on chickens and an earnest collegian bucking the line.  Her guests were as a result perpetually forming new ententes and combinations, finding themselves bumped about like those little moving figures which one sees in shop-windows on Broadway, which revolve on a metal disc until, urged by impact with another little figure, they scatter to regroup themselves elsewhere.  It was a fascinating feature of Mrs. Pett’s at-homes and one which assisted that mental broadening process already alluded to that one never knew, when listening to a discussion on the sincerity of Oscar Wilde, whether it would not suddenly change in the middle of a sentence to an argument on the inner meaning of the Russian Ballet.

Plunging now into a group dominated for the moment by an angular woman who was saying loud and penetrating things about the suffrage, Mrs. Pett had seized and removed a tall, blonde young man with a mild, vacuous face.  For the past few minutes this young man had been sitting bolt upright on a chair with his hands on his knees, so exactly in the manner of an end-man at a minstrel show that one would hardly have been surprised had he burst into song or asked a conundrum.

Ann followed her father’s gaze.

“Do you mean the man talking to aunt Nesta?  There, they’ve gone over to speak to Willie Partridge.  Do you mean that one?”

“Yes.  Who is he?”

“Well, I like that!” said Ann.  “Considering that you introduced him to us!  That’s Lord Wisbeach, who came to uncle Peter with a letter of introduction from you.  You met him in Canada.”

“I remember now.  I ran across him in British Columbia.  We camped together one night.  I’d never seen him before and I didn’t see him again.  He said he wanted a letter to old Pete for some reason, so I scribbled him one in pencil on the back of an envelope.  I’ve never met any one who played a better game of draw poker.  He cleaned me out.  There’s a lot in that fellow, in spite of his looking like a musical comedy dude.  He’s clever.”

Ann looked at him meditatively.

“It’s odd that you should be discovering hidden virtues in Lord Wisbeach, father.  I’ve been trying to make up my mind about him.  He wants me to marry him.”

“He does!  I suppose a good many of these young fellows here want the same thing, don’t they, Ann?” Mr. Chester looked at his daughter with interest.  Her growing-up and becoming a beauty had always been a perplexity to him.  He could never rid himself of the impression of her as a long-legged child in short skirts.  “I suppose you’re refusing them all the time?”