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charming American girl, a Miss Schoonmaker, whose father, it seems, used to be a friend of your Uncle Galahad. She appeared to be quite taken with Ronald, and he with her. He travelled back to Paris with her and left her there.’
    ‘How fickle men are!’ sighed Millicent.

    ‘She had some shopping to do,’ said Lady Constance sharply. ‘By this time she is probably in London. Julia invited her to stay at Blandings, and she accepted. She may be here any day now. And I do think, my dear,’ proceeded Lady Constance earnestly, ‘that, before she arrives, you ought to consider very carefully what your feelings towards Ronald really are.’
    ‘You mean, if I don’t watch my step, this Miss Doopenhacker may steal my Ronnie away from me?’
    It was not quite how Lady Constance would have put it herself, but it conveyed her meaning.
    ‘Exactly.’
    Millicent laughed. It was plain that her flesh declined to creep at the prospect.
    ‘Good luck to her,’ she said. ‘She can count on a fish-slice from me, and I’ll be a bridesmaid, too, if wanted. Can’t you understand, Aunt Constance, that I haven’t the slightest desire to marry Ronnie. We’re great pals, and all that, but he’s not my style. Too short, for one thing.’
    ‘Short?’
    ‘I’m inches taller than he is. When we went up the aisle, I should look like someone taking her little brother for a walk.’
    Lady Constance would undoubtedly have commented on this remark, but before she could do so the procession reappeared, playing an unexpected return date. Footman James bore a dish of fruit, Footman Thomas a salver with a cream-jug on it. Beach, as before, confined himself to a straight ornamental role.
    ‘Oo!’ said Millicent welcomingly. And the spaniel, who liked anything involving cream, gave a silent nod of approval.
    ‘Well,’ said Lady Constance, as the procession withdrew, giving up the lost cause, ‘if you won’t marry Ronald, I suppose you won’t.’
    ‘That’s about it,’ agreed Millicent, pouring cream.
    ‘At any rate, I am relieved to hear that there is no nonsense going on between you and this Mr Carmody. That I could not have endured.’
    ‘He’s only moderately popular with you, isn’t he?’
    ‘I dislike him extremely.’
    ‘I wonder why. I should have thought he was fairly all right, as young men go. Uncle Clarence likes him. So does Uncle Gaily.’
    Lady Constance had a high, arched nose, admirably adapted for sniffing. She used it now to the limits of its power.
    ‘Mr Carmody,’ she said, ‘is just the sort of young man your Uncle Galahad would like.
    No doubt he reminds him of the horrible men he used to go about London with in his young days.’
    ‘Mr Carmody isn’t a bit like that.’

    ‘Indeed?’ Lady Constance sniffed again. ‘Well, I dislike mentioning it to you, Millicent, for I am old-fashioned enough to think that young girls should be shielded from a knowledge of the world, but I happen to know that Mr Carmody is not at all a nice young man. I have it on the most excellent authority that he is entangled with some impossible chorus-girl.’
    It is not easy to sit suddenly bolt-upright in a deep garden-chair, but Millicent managed the feat.
    ‘What!’
    ‘Lady Allardyce told me so.’
    ‘And how does she know?’
    ‘Her son Vernon told her. A girl of the name of Brown. Vernon Allardyce says that he used to see her repeatedly, lunching and dining and dancing with Mr Carmody.’
    There was a long silence.
    ‘Nice boy, Vernon,’ said Millicent.
    ‘He tells his mother everything.’
    ‘That’s what I meant. I think it’s so sweet of him.’ Millicent rose. ‘Well, I’m going to take a short stroll.’
    She wandered off towards the rose-garden.
    IV
    A young man who has arranged to meet the girl he loves in the rose-garden at six sharp naturally goes there at five-twenty-five, so as not to be late. Hugo Carmody had done this, with the result that by three minutes to six he was feeling as if he had been