As he spoke Stafford made inward comment on the story being told to him, so patently true and honest in every particular.  It was rather contradictory and unreasonable, however, to hear this big, shy, rugged fellow taking exception, however delicately and by inference only, to the lack of high refinement, to the want of fine fleur, in Al’mah’s personality.  It did not occur to him that Byng was the kind of man who would be comparing Jasmine’s quite wonderful delicacy, perfumed grace, and exquisite adaptability with the somewhat coarser beauty and genius of the singer.  It seemed natural that Byng should turn to a personality more in keeping with his own, more likely to make him perfectly at ease mentally and physically.

Stafford judged Jasmine by his own conversations with her, when he was so acutely alive to the fact that she was the most naturally brilliant woman he had ever known or met; and had capacities for culture and attainment, as she had gifts of discernment and skill in thought, in marked contrast to the best of the ladies of their world.  To him she had naturally shown only the one side of her nature—­she adapted herself to him as she did to every one else; she had put him always at an advantage, and, in doing so, herself as well.

Full of dangerous coquetry he knew her to be—­she had been so from a child; and though this was culpable in a way, he and most others had made more than due allowance, because mother-care and loving surveillance had been withdrawn so soon.  For years she had been the spoiled darling of her father and brothers until her father married again; and then it had been too late to control her.  The wonder was that she had turned out so well, that she had been so studious, so determined, so capable.  Was it because she had unusual brain and insight into human nature, and had been wise and practical enough to see that there was a point where restraint must be applied, and so had kept herself free from blame or deserved opprobrium, if not entirely from criticism?  In the day when girls were not in the present sense emancipated, she had the savoir faire and the poise of a married woman of thirty.  Yet she was delicate, fresh, and flower-like, and very amusing, in a way which delighted men; and she did not antagonize women.

Stafford had ruled Byng out of consideration where she was concerned.  He had not heard her father’s remark of the night before, “Jasmine will marry that nabob—­you’ll see.”

He was, however, recalled to the strange possibilities of life by a note which was handed to Byng as they stood before the club-room fire.  He could not help but see—­he knew the envelope, and no other handwriting was like Jasmine’s, that long, graceful, sliding hand.  Byng turned it over before opening it.

“Hello,” he said, “I’m caught.  It’s a woman’s hand.  I wonder how she knew I was here.”

Mentally Stafford shrugged his shoulders as he said to himself:  “If Jasmine wanted to know where he was, she’d find out.  I wonder—­I wonder.”