’Like flappers of a penguin:  and advances in jerks:  he is head of the great Firm of Quatley Brothers:  Sir Abraham:  finances or farms one of the South American Republics:  we call him, Pride of Port.  He consumes it and he presents it.’

‘And who is that little man, who stops everybody?’

’People of distinction indeed!  That little man—­is your upper lip underrateing him? . . .  When a lady’s lip is erratically disdainful, it suggests a misuse of a copious treasury, deserving to be mulcted, punished—­how?—­who can say?—­that little man, now that little man, with a lift of his little finger, could convulse the Bacon Market!’

Mrs. Blathenoy shook.  Hearing Colonel Corfe exclaim: 

‘Bacon Market!’ she let fly a peal.  Then she turned to a fresh satellite, a round and a ruddy, ‘at her service ever,’ Mr. Beaves Urmsing, and repeated Fenellan’s words.  He, in unfeigned wonderment at such unsuspected powers, cried:  ‘Dear me!’ and stared at the little man, making the pretty lady’s face a twinkling dew.

He had missed the Concert.  Was it first-rate?  Ecstasy answered in the female voice.

‘Hem’d fool I am to keep appointments!’ he muttered.

She reproved him:  ’Fie, Mr. Urmsing; it’s the making of them, not the keeping!’

’Ah, my dear ma’am, if I’d had Blathenoy’s luck when he made a certain appointment.  And he was not so much older than me?  The old ones get the prizes!’

Mr. Beaves Urmsing prompted Colonel Corfe to laugh in triumph.  The colonel’s eyebrows were up in fixity over sleepy lids.  He brightened to propose the conducting of the pretty woman to the banquet.

‘We shall see them going in,’ said she.  ’Mr. Radnor has a French cook, who does wonders.  But I heard him asking for Mr. Beaves Urmsing.  I’m sure he expected The Marigolds at his Concert.’

‘Anything to oblige the company,’ said the rustic ready chorister, clearing his throat.

The lady’s feet were bent in the direction of a grassy knoll, where sunflowers, tulips, dahlias, peonies, of the sex eclipsed at a distance its roses and lilies.  Fenellan saw Dartrey, still a centre of the merchantmen, strolling thither.

’And do you know, your brother is good enough to dine with us next week, Thursday, down here,’ she murmured.  ’I could venture to command?—­if you are not induced.’

‘Whichever word applies to a faithful subject.’

‘I do so wish your brother had not left the army!’

‘You have one son of Mars.’

Her eyes took the colonel up to cast him down:  he was not the antidote.  She said to him:  ‘Luciani’s voice wears better than her figure.’

The colonel replied:  ‘I remember,’ and corrected himself, ’at Eton, in jackets:  she was not so particularly slim; never knew how to dress.  You beat Italians there!  She moved one as a youngster.’

‘Eton boys are so susceptible!’