“Does she care a snap for anybody?” asked the other.  Then he added, with a kind of query in the question apart from the question itself:  “Where is the great man—­where’s Stafford to-night?”

“Counting his winnings, I suppose.”  Lady Tynemouth’s face grew soft.  “He has done great things for so young a man.  What a distance he has gone since he pulled me and my red umbrella back from the Zambesi Falls!”

Then proceeded a gay conversation, in which Lady Tynemouth was quite happy.  When she could talk of Ian Stafford she was really enjoying herself.  In her eyes he was the perfect man, whom other women tried to spoil, and whom, she flattered herself, she kept sound and unspoiled by her frank platonic affection.

“Our host seems a bit abstracted to-night,” said her table companion after a long discussion about what Stafford had done and what he still might do.

“The war—­it means so much to him,” said Lady Tynemouth.  Yet she had seen the note of abstraction too, and it had made her wonder what was happening in this household.

The other demurred.

“But I imagine he has been prepared for the war for some time.  He didn’t seem excessively worried about it before dinner, yet he seemed upset too, so pale and anxious-looking.”

“I’ll make her talk, make her tell me what it is, if there is anything,” said Lady Tynemouth to herself.  “I’ll ask myself to stay with her for a couple of days.”

Superficial as Lady Tynemouth seemed to many, she had real sincerity, and she was a friend in need to her friends.  She loved Jasmine as much as she could love any woman, and she said now, as she looked at Jasmine’s face, so alert, so full of raillery, yet with such an undertone of misery: 

“She looks as if she needed a friend.”

After dinner she contrived to get her arm through that of her hostess, and gave it an endearing pressure.  “May I come to you for a few days, Jasmine?” she asked.

“I was going to ask if you would have me,” answered Jasmine, with a queer little smile.  “Rudyard will be up to his ears for a few days, and that’s a chance for you and me to do some shopping, and some other things together, isn’t it?”

She was thinking of appearances, of the best way to separate from Rudyard for a little while, till the longer separation could be arranged without scandal.  Ian Stafford had said that things could go on in this house as before, that Rudyard would never hint to her what he knew, or rather what the letter had told him or left untold:  but that was impossible.  Whatever Rudyard was willing to do, there was that which she could not do.  Twenty-four hours had accomplished a complete revolution in her attitude towards life and in her sense of things.  Just for these immediate days to come, when the tragedy of Fellowes’ death would be made a sensation of the hour, there must be temporary expedients; and Lady Tynemouth had suggested one which had its great advantages.