“But, Adrian, you are the most selfish man I’ve ever known,” Jasmine was saying as Byng entered.

Either Jasmine did not hear the servant announce Byng, or she pretended not to do so, and the words were said so distinctly that Byng heard them as he came forward.

“Well, he is selfish,” she added to Byng, as she shook hands.  “I’ve known him since I was a child, and he has always had the best of everything and given nothing for it.”  Turning again to Fellowes, she continued:  “Yes, it’s true.  The golden apples just fall into your hands.”

“Well, I wish I had the apples, since you give me the reputation,” Fellowes replied, and, shaking hands with Byng, who gave him an enveloping look and a friendly greeting, he left the room.

“Such a boy—­Adrian,” Jasmine said, as they sat down.

“Boy—­he looks thirty or more!” remarked Byng in a dry tone.

“He is just thirty.  I call him a boy because he is so young in most things that matter to people.  He is the most sumptuous person—­entirely a luxury.  Did you ever see such colouring—­like a woman’s!  But selfish, as I said, and useful, too, is Adrian.  Yes, he really is very useful.  He would be a private secretary beyond price to any one who needed such an article.  He has tact—­as you saw—­and would make a wonderful master of ceremonies, a splendid comptroller of the household and equerry and lord-chamberlain in one.  There, if ever you want such a person, or if—­”

She paused.  As she did so she was sharply conscious of the contrast between her visitor and Ian Stafford in outward appearance.  Byng’s clothes were made by good hands, but they were made by tailors who knew their man was not particular, and that he would not “try on.”  The result was a looseness and carelessness of good things—­giving him, in a way, the look of shambling power.  Yet in spite of the tie a little crooked, and the trousers a little too large and too short, he had touches of that distinction which power gives.  His large hands with the square-pointed fingers had obtrusive veins, but they were not common.

“Certainly,” he intervened, smiling indulgently; “if ever I want a comptroller, or an equerry, or a lord-chamberlain, I’ll remember ‘Adrian.’  In these days one can never tell.  There’s the Sahara.  It hasn’t been exploited yet.  It has no emperor.”

“I like you in this mood,” she said, eagerly.  “You seem on the surface so tremendously practical and sensible.  You frighten me a little, and I like to hear you touch things off with raillery.  But, seriously, if you can ever put anything in that boy’s way, please do so.  He has had bad luck—­in your own Rand mine.  He lost nearly everything in that, speculating, and—­”

Byng’s face grew serious again.  “But he shouldn’t have speculated; he should have invested.  It wants brains, good fortune, daring and wealth to speculate.  But I will remember him, if you say so.  I don’t like to think that he has been hurt in any enterprise of mine.  I’ll keep him in mind.  Make him one of my secretaries perhaps.”