“The maid with my frock, thank heavens!” Lady Cynthia announced, glancing out of the window.  “My last anxiety is removed.  I am looking forward now to a wonderful night.”

“You may very easily be disappointed,” her host warned her.  “My entertainments appeal more, as a rule, to men.”

“Why don’t you be thoroughly original and issue no invitations to women at all?” Margaret enquired.

“For the same reason that you adorn your rooms and the dinner-table with flowers,” he answered.  “One needs them—­as a relief.  Apart from that, I am really proud of my dancing-room, and there again, you see, your sex is necessary.”

“We are flattered,” Margaret declared, with a little bow.  “It does seem queer to think that you should own what Cynthia’s cousin, Davy Hinton, once told me was the best floor in London, and that I have never danced on it.”

“Nor I,” Lady Cynthia put in.  “There might have been some excuse for not asking you, Margaret, but why an ultra-Bohemian like myself has had to beg and plead for an invitation, I really cannot imagine.”

“You might find,” Sir Timothy said, “you may even now—­that some of my men guests are not altogether to your liking.”

“Quite content to take my risk,” Lady Cynthia declared cheerfully.  “The man with the best manners I ever met—­it was at one of Maggie’s studio dances, too—­was a bookmaker.  And a retired prize-fighter brought me home once from an Albert Hall dance.”

“How did he behave?” Francis asked.

“He was wistful but restrained,” Lady Cynthia replied, “quite the gentleman, in fact.”

“You encourage me to hope for the best,” Sir Timothy said, rising to his feet.  “You will excuse me now?  I have a few final preparations to make.”

“Are we to be allowed,” Margaret enquired, “to come across the park?”

“You would not find it convenient,” her father assured her.  “You had better order a car, say for ten o’clock.  Don’t forget to bring your cards of invitation, and find me immediately you arrive.  I wish to direct your proceedings to some extent.”

Lady Cynthia strolled across with him to the postern-gate and stood by his side after he had opened it.  Several of the animals, grazing in different parts of the park, pricked up their ears at the sound.  An old mare came hobbling towards him; a flea-bitten grey came trotting down the field, his head in the air, neighing loudly.

“You waste a great deal of tenderness upon your animal friends, dear host,” she murmured.

He deliberately looked away from her.

“The reciprocation, at any rate, has its disadvantages,” he remarked, glancing a little disconsolately at the brown hairs upon his coat-sleeve.  “I shall have to find another coat before I can receive my guests—­which is a further reason,” he added, “why I must hurry.”

At the entrance to the great gates of The Walled House, two men in livery were standing.  One of them examined with care the red cards of invitation, and as soon as he was satisfied the gates were opened by some unseen agency.  The moment the car had passed through, they were closed again.