Now Sir Robert frowned, Alan coloured, two or three of the company laughed outright, and one of the French gentlemen who understood English and had already drunk as much as was good for him, remarked loudly to his neighbour, “Ah! she is charming.  She do touch the spot, like that ointment you give me to-day.  How do we grow rich and why do the people invest? Mon Dieu! why do they invest?  That is the great mystery.  I say that cette belle demoiselle, votre niece, est ravissante.  Elle a d’esprit, mon ami Haswell.”

Apparently her uncle did not share these sentiments, for he turned as red as any turkey-cock, and said across the great round table: 

“My dear Barbara, I wish that you would leave matters which you do not understand alone.  We are here to dine, not to talk about finance.”

“Certainly, Uncle,” she answered sweetly.  “I stand, or rather sit, reproved.  I suppose that I have put my foot into it as usual, and the worst of it is,” she added, turning to Sir Robert, “that I am just as ignorant as I was before.”

“If you want to master these matters, Miss Champers,” said Aylward with a rather forced laugh, “you must go into training and worship at the shrine of”—­he meant to say Mammon, then thinking that the word sounded unpleasant, substituted—­“the Yellow God as we do.”

At these words Alan, who had been studying his plate, looked up quickly, and her uncle’s face turned from red to white.  But the irrepressible Barbara seized upon them.

“The Yellow God,” she repeated.  “Do you mean money or that fetish thing of Major Vernon’s with the terrible woman’s face that I saw at the office in the City.  Well, to change the subject, tell us, Alan, what is that yellow god of yours and where did it come from?”

“My uncle Austin, who was my mother’s brother and a missionary, brought it from West Africa a great many years ago.  He was the first to visit the tribe who worship it; in fact I do not think that anyone has ever visited them since.  But really I do not know all the story.  Jeekie can tell you about it if you want to know, for he is one of that people and escaped with my uncle.”

Now Jeekie having left the room, some of the guests wished to send for him, but Mr. Champers-Haswell objected.  The end of it was that a compromise was effected, Alan undertaking to produce his retainer afterwards when they went to play billiards or cards.

Dinner was over at length and the diners, who had dined well, were gathered in the billiard room to smoke and amuse themselves as they wished.  It was a very large room, sixty feet long indeed, with a wide space in the centre between the two tables, which was furnished as a lounge.  When the gentlemen entered it they found Barbara standing by the great fireplace in this central space, a little shape of white and silver in its emptiness.

“Forgive me for intruding on you,” she said, “and please do not stop smoking, for I like the smell.  I have sat up expressly to hear Jeekie’s story of the Yellow God.  Alan, produce Jeekie, or I shall go to bed at once.”