“And this is Hilda,” concluded Mrs. Phillips.  “She ought to be in bed if she hadn’t a naughty Daddy who spoils her.”

A lank, black-haired girl, with a pair of burning eyes looking out of a face that, but for the thin line of the lips, would have been absolutely colourless, rose suddenly from behind a bowl of artificial flowers.  Joan could not suppress a slight start; she had not noticed her on entering.  The girl came slowly forward, and Joan felt as if the uncanny eyes were eating her up.  She made an effort and held out her hand with a smile, and the girl’s long thin fingers closed on it in a pressure that hurt.  She did not speak.

“She only came back yesterday for the half-term,” explained Mrs. Phillips.  “There’s no keeping her away from her books.  ’Twas her own wish to be sent to boarding-school.  How would you like to go to Girton and be a B.A. like Miss Allway?” she asked, turning to the child.

Phillips’s entrance saved the need of a reply.  To the evident surprise of his wife he was in evening clothes.

“Hulloa.  You’ve got ’em on,” she said.

He laughed.  “I shall have to get used to them sooner or later,” he said.

Joan felt relieved—­she hardly knew why—­that he bore the test.  It was a well-built, athletic frame, and he had gone to a good tailor.  He looked taller in them; and the strong, clean-shaven face less rugged.

Joan sat next to him at the round dinner-table with the child the other side of him.  She noticed that he ate as far as possible with his right hand—­his hands were large, but smooth and well shaped—­his left remaining under the cloth, beneath which the child’s right hand, when free, would likewise disappear.  For a while the conversation consisted chiefly of anecdotes by Mr. Airlie.  There were few public men and women about whom he did not know something to their disadvantage.  Joan, listening, found herself repeating the experience of a night or two previous, when, during a performance of Hamlet, Niel Singleton, who was playing the grave-digger, had taken her behind the scenes.  Hamlet, the King of Denmark and the Ghost were sharing a bottle of champagne in the Ghost’s dressing-room:  it happened to be the Ghost’s birthday.  On her return to the front of the house, her interest in the play was gone.  It was absurd that it should be so; but the fact remained.

Mr. Airlie had lunched the day before with a leonine old gentleman who every Sunday morning thundered forth Social Democracy to enthusiastic multitudes on Tower Hill.  Joan had once listened to him and had almost been converted:  he was so tremendously in earnest.  She now learnt that he lived in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and filled, in private life, the perfectly legitimate calling of a company promoter in partnership with a Dutch Jew.  His latest prospectus dwelt upon the profits to be derived from an amalgamation of the leading tanning industries:  by means of which the price of leather could be enormously increased.