“And she’s beginning to wear her evening gowns on the street in the morning.  Besides, her shoes lob over at the heels,” remarked the rangy Mrs. Carter.

“Yes, she’s getting to be thoroughly English.  I’ve noticed a tendency to chirp like a bird when she talks, too.”

“That governess is a mighty stunning girl, by the way,” said Rolfe.

“She’s been over here a year, you know,” said Mrs. Scudaway, with no apparent relevancy.

“Have you heard when Eleanor’s engagement is to be announced?” asked Miss Ratliff.

“I’m not supposed to tell, but I have it on the best authority that it will be announced next week, and the wedding will take place in November.  I suppose they’ll ask Joe Dauntless to be an usher,” said Mrs. Carter.

“Hello!  Joe’s gone outside.  He must have heard something we said,” said Rolfe, setting his highball glass down with a thump.

“Oh, if he had only been educated at Cambridge instead of in Cambridge,” mourned Mrs. Carter.

It was true that the tall, good-looking Mr. Dauntless had left the room, but not because he had heard the comments of his friends.  He was standing on the wind-swept verandah, peering through the mist toward a distant splash of light across the ravine to the right of the club grounds.  The fog and mist combined to run the many lights of the Thursdale windows into a single smear of colour a few shades brighter than the darkness from which it protruded.  Dauntless’s heart was inside that vague, impressionistic circle of colour, but his brain was very much in evidence on the distant outside.  What were the workings of that eager brain will soon be revealed—­to the reader, at least, if not to the occupants of the rain-bound clubhouse.

A word concerning Dauntless.  He was the good-looking son of old banker Dauntless, who died immediately after his cashier brought ruin to the concern of which he was president.  This blow fell when his son was in his senior year at Harvard.  He took his degree, and then, instead of the promised trip around the world, he came home and went to work in the offices of a big brokerage firm.  Everybody knew and liked him.  He was a steady, earnest worker, and likewise a sportsman of the right temperament.  Big, fashionable Faraway looked upon him as its most gallant member; no one cared to remember that he might have been very rich; every one loved him because he had been rich and was worthy in spite of that.  It was common knowledge that he was desperately in love with pretty Eleanor Thursdale, daughter of the eminently fashionable and snobbishly aristocratic widow Thursdale, mistress of many millions and leader of select hundreds.  Moreover, it was now pretty well known that Mrs. Thursdale had utterly lost sight of Dauntless in surveying the field of desirable husbands for Eleanor.  She could see nothing but Englishmen, behind whom lurked the historic London drawing-rooms and British estates.  That is how and why young Windomshire, a most delightful Londoner, with prospects and a peerage behind him, came to be a guest in her city house, following close upon a long sojourn in the Bermudas.  He had been chosen; the battle was over, so far as Eleanor’s hand was concerned.  What matter if Dauntless had her heart?