“O la! la!  What a small fuss! as Profond would say.  Father, I don’t like that man.”

She saw him stop, and take something out of his breast pocket.

“You don’t?” he said.  “Why?”

“Nothing,” murmured Fleur; “just caprice!”

“No,” said Soames; “not caprice!” And he tore what was in his hands across.  “You’re right.  I don’t like him either!”

“Look!” said Fleur softly.  “There he goes!  I hate his shoes; they don’t make any noise.”

Down in the failing light Prosper Profond moved, his hands in his side pockets, whistling softly in his beard; he stopped, and glanced up at the sky, as if saying:  “I don’t think much of that small moon.”

Fleur drew back.  “Isn’t he a great cat?” she whispered; and the sharp click of the billiard-balls rose, as if Jack Cardigan had capped the cat, the moon, caprice, and tragedy with:  “In off the red!”

Monsieur Profond had resumed his stroll, to a teasing little tune in his beard.  What was it?  Oh! yes, from “Rigoletto”:  “Donna a mobile.”  Just what he would think!  She squeezed her father’s arm.

“Prowling!” she muttered, as he turned the corner of the house.  It was past that disillusioned moment which divides the day and night-still and lingering and warm, with hawthorn scent and lilac scent clinging on the riverside air.  A blackbird suddenly burst out.  Jon would be in London by now; in the Park perhaps, crossing the Serpentine, thinking of her!  A little sound beside her made her turn her eyes; her father was again tearing the paper in his hands.  Fleur saw it was a cheque.

“I shan’t sell him my Gauguin,” he said.  “I don’t know what your aunt and Imogen see in him.”

“Or Mother.”

“Your mother!” said Soames.

‘Poor Father!’ she thought.  ’He never looks happy—­not really happy.  I don’t want to make him worse, but of course I shall have to, when Jon comes back.  Oh! well, sufficient unto the night!’

“I’m going to dress,” she said.

In her room she had a fancy to put on her “freak” dress.  It was of gold tissue with little trousers of the same, tightly drawn in at the ankles, a page’s cape slung from the shoulders, little gold shoes, and a gold-winged Mercury helmet; and all over her were tiny gold bells, especially on the helmet; so that if she shook her head she pealed.  When she was dressed she felt quite sick because Jon could not see her; it even seemed a pity that the sprightly young man Michael Mont would not have a view.  But the gong had sounded, and she went down.

She made a sensation in the drawing-room.  Winifred thought it “Most amusing.”  Imogen was enraptured.  Jack Cardigan called it “stunning,” “ripping,” “topping,” and “corking.”

Monsieur Profond, smiling with his eyes, said:  “That’s a nice small dress!” Her mother, very handsome in black, sat looking at her, and said nothing.  It remained for her father to apply the test of common sense.  “What did you put on that thing for?  You’re not going to dance.”