She kept me waiting in the drawing-room but a minute before she made her appearance, grasped my hand, proclaimed my goodness in responding so soon to her call, bade me sit down on the sofa by her side, inquired after my health, and, the gods of politeness being propitiated, plunged at once into the midst of matters.

Dale was going downhill headlong to Gadarene catastrophe.  He had no eyes or ears or thoughts for any one in the world but for a certain Lola Brandt, a brazen creature from a circus, the shape of whose limbs was the common knowledge of mankind from Dublin to Yokohama, and whose path by sea and land, from Yokohama to Dublin, was strewn with the bodies of her victims.  With this man-eating tigress, declared Lady Kynnersley, was Dale infatuated.  He scorched himself morning, noon, and night in her devastating presence.  Had cut himself adrift from home, from society.  Had left trailing about on his study table a jeweller’s bill for a diamond bracelet.  Was committing follies that made my brain reel to hear.  Had threatened, if worried much longer, to marry the Scarlet One incontinently.  Heaven knew, cried Lady Kynnersley, how many husbands she had already—­scattered along the track between Dublin and Yokohama.  There was no doubt about it.  Dale was hurtling down to everlasting bonfire.  She looked to me to hold out the restraining hand.

“You have already spoken to Dale on the subject?” I asked, mindful of the inharmonious socks and tie.

“I can talk to him of nothing else,” said Lady Kynnersley desperately.

“That’s a pity,” said I.  “You should talk to him of Heaven, or pigs, or Babylonic cuneiform—­anything but Lola Brandt.  You ought to go to work on a different system.”

“But I haven’t a system at all,” cried the poor lady.  “How was I to foresee that my only son was going to fall in love with a circus rider?  These are contingencies in life for which one, with all the thought in the world, can make no provision.  I had arranged, as you know, that he should marry Maisie Ellerton, as charming a girl as ever there was.  Isn’t she?  And an independent fortune besides.”

“A rosebud wrapped in a gold leaf,” I murmured.

“Now he’s breaking the child’s heart——­”

“There was never any engagement between them, I am sure of that,” I remarked.

“There wasn’t.  But I gave her to understand it was a settled affair—­merely a question of Dale speaking.  And, instead of speaking, he will have nothing to do with her, and spends all his time—­and, I suppose, though I don’t like to refer to it, all his money—­in the society of this unmentionable woman.”

“Is she really so—­so red as she is painted?” I asked.

“She isn’t painted at all.  That’s where her artful and deceitful devilry comes in——­”

“I suppose Dale,” said I, “declares her to be an angel of light and purity?”

“An angel on horseback!  Whoever heard of such a thing?”