Lord Meadowson, a sporting peer, who was one of Sir Timothy’s few intimates, came over to the table.  He paid his respects to the two ladies and Francis, and turned a little eagerly to Sir Timothy.

“Well?” he asked.

Sir Timothy nodded.

“We shall be quite prepared for you,” he said.  “Better bring your cheque-book.”

“Capital!” the other exclaimed.  “As I hadn’t heard anything, I was beginning to wonder whether you would be ready with your end of the show.”

“There will be no hitch so far as we are concerned,” Sir Timothy assured him.

“More mysteries?” Margaret enquired, as Meadowson departed with a smile of satisfaction.

Her father shrugged his shoulders.

“Scarcely that,” he replied.  “It is a little wager between Lord Meadowson and myself which is to be settled to-morrow.”

Lady Torrington, a fussy little woman, her hostess of the night before, on her way down the room stopped and shook hands with Lady Cynthia.

“Why, my dear,” she exclaimed, “wherever did you vanish to last night?  Claude told us all that, in the middle of a dance with him, you excused yourself for a moment and he never saw you again.  I quite expected to read in the papers this morning that you had eloped.”

“Precisely what I did,” Lady Cynthia declared.  “The only trouble was that my partner had had enough of me before the evening was over, and deposited me once more in Grosvenor Square.  It is really very humiliating,” she went on meditatively, “how every one always returns me.”

“You talk such nonsense, Cynthia!” Lady Torrington exclaimed, a little pettishly.  “However, you found your way home all right?”

“Quite safely, thank you.  I was going to write you a note this afternoon.  I went away on an impulse.  All I can say is that I am sorry.  Do forgive me.”

“Certainly!” was the somewhat chilly reply.  “Somehow or other, you seem to have earned the right to do exactly as you choose.  Some of my young men whom you had promised to dance with, were disappointed, but after all, I suppose that doesn’t matter.”

“Not much,” Lady Cynthia assented sweetly.  “I think a few disappointments are good for most of the young men of to-day.”

“What did you do last night, Cynthia?” Margaret asked her presently, when Lady Torrington had passed on.

“I eloped with your father,” Lady Cynthia confessed, smiling across at Sir Timothy.  “We went for a little drive together and I had a most amusing time.  The only trouble was, as I have been complaining to that tiresome woman, he brought me home again.”

“But where did you go to?” Margaret persisted.

“It was an errand of charity,” Sir Timothy declared.

“It sounds very mysterious,” Francis observed.  “Is that all we are to be told?”