I stepped into the drawing-room close by and drew up a telegram to Dale.

“Lady summoned by Papadopoulos on private affairs.  Avoid lunacy save for electioneering purposes.—­SIMON.”

Then I joined Lola and Colonel Bunnion.  She was lying back in her laziest and most pantherine attitude, and she looked up at me as I approached with eyes full of velvet softness.  For the life of me I could not help feeling glad that they were turned on me and not on Dale Kynnersley.

Almost immediately the elder Miss Bostock came up to claim the Colonel for bridge.  He rose reluctantly.

“I suppose it’s no use asking you to make a fourth, Mr. de Gex?” she asked, after the subacid manner of her kind.

“I’m afraid not,” I replied sweetly.  Whereupon she rescued the Colonel from the syren and left me alone with her.  I lit a cigarette and sat by her side.  As she did not stir or speak I asked whether she was tired.

“Not very.  I’m thinking.  Do you know you’ve taught me an awful lot?”

“I?  What can I have taught you?”

“The way people like yourself look at things.  I’m treating Dale abominably.  I didn’t realise it before.”

Now why on earth did she bring Dale in just at that moment.

“Indeed?” said I.

She nodded her head and said in her languorous voice: 

“He’s over head and ears in love with me and thinks I care for him.  I don’t.  I don’t care a brass button for him.  I’m a bad influence in his life, and the sooner I take myself out of it the better.  Don’t you think so?”

“You know my opinions,” I said.

“If I had followed your advice at first,” she continued, “we needn’t have had all this commotion.  And yet I’m not sorry.”

“What do you propose to do?” I asked.

“Before deciding, I shall see my husband.”

“You shall do no such thing.”

She smiled.  “I shall.”

I protested.  Captain Vauvenarde had put himself outside the pale.  He was not fit to associate with decent women.  What object could she have in meeting him?

“I want to judge for myself,” she replied.

“Judge what?  Surely not whether he is eligible as a husband!”

“Yes,” she said.

“But, my dear Lola,” I cried, “the notion is as crazy as any of Anastasius Papadopoulos’s.  Of course, as soon as he learns that you’re a rich woman, he’ll want to live with you, and use your money for his gaming-hell.”

“I am going to meet him,” she said quietly.

“I forbid it.”

“You’re too late, dear friend.  I wrote him a letter before dinner and sent it to the Cercle Africain by special messenger.  I also wrote to Anastasius.  I asked them both to see me to-morrow morning.  That’s why I’ve been so gay this evening.”

At the sight of my blank face she laughed, and with one of her movements rose from her chair.  I rose too.