architecture, or something. Well, dear, as Percy won’t be in yet, I think I’d better go. I have a round of visits to pay.”

“Percy is going to write to you. He wants you to go to a concert with him. He particularly wants you to go.”

Lady Kellynch brightened up. “Dear boy, does he? Of course I’ll go. Well, good-bye, darling.”

She swept from the room with the queenly grace and dignity that always seemed a little out of proportion to the occasion—one expected her to make a court curtsy, and go out backwards.

“My mother-in-law really believes it matters whether she calls on people or not,” said Bertha, in her low, even voice. “Isn’t it touching?”

Madeline seized her hand.

“Bertha, need I be frightened of Moona Chivvey? She’s a dangerous sort of girl; she takes interest in all the things Rupert does: pictures, and poetry and art needlework.”

“Does Rupert really do art needlework? What a universal genius he is!”

“Don’t be absurd! I mean the things he understands. And she runs after him, rather. Need I be afraid?”

“No, you need not,” reassured Bertha. “I don’t think she sounds at all violent. There’s a ring.”

“Then I’ll go.”

Almost immediately afterwards the servant announced “Mr. Nigel Hillier.”

Nigel Hillier came in cheerily and gaily, brimming over with vitality and in the highest spirits. At present he was like sunshine and fresh air. There was a lurking danger that as he grew older he might become breezy. But as yet there was no sign of a draught. He was just delightfully exhilarating. He was not what women call handsome or divine, but he was rather what men call a smart-looking chap: fair, with bright blue eyes, and the most mischievous smile in London. He was unusually rapid in thought, speech and movement, without being restless, and his presence was an excellent cure for slackness, languor, strenuousness or a morbid sense of duty.

“You look as if you had only just got up,” remarked Bertha, as she gave him her hand. “Not a bit as though you’d been through the fatigues and worries and the heat and burden of the day.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” he answered. “You know perfectly well I always get up in time to see the glorious sunset! Why this reproach? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you very early in the day; I always regard you less as a daughter of the morning than as a minion of the moon.”

“How is Mrs. Hillier?” replied Bertha rather coldly.

“All right—I promise I won’t. Mary? Why Mary is well—very well—but just, perhaps, a teeny bit trying—just a shade wearing. No—no, I don’t mean that. … Well, I’m at your service for the play and so on. Shall I write to Rupert Denison and Miss Irwin? And will you all come and dine with me, and where shall we go?”

“Don’t you think something thrilling and exciting and emotional—or, perhaps, something light and frivolous?”

“For Rupert I advise certainly the trivial, the flippant. It would have a better effect. Why not go to the new Revue—‘That will be Fourpence’—where they have the two young Simultaneous Dancers, the Misses Zanie and Lunie Le Face—one, I fancy, is more simultaneous than the other, I forget which. They are delightful, and will wake Denison up. In fact, I don’t know who they wouldn’t wake up, they make such a row. They dance and sing, about Dixie and Honey and coons—and that sort of thing. They sing quite well, too—I mean for them.”

“But not for us? … No, I don’t want to take him with Madeline to anything that could be called a music-hall—something more correct for a jeune fille would be better. …”

“To lead to a proposal, you mean. Well, we’d better fall back upon His Majesty’s or Granville Barker. Poor Charlie! It’s hard lines on that boy, Bertha—he’s really keen on Miss Irwin.”

“I know; but what can we do? It’s Rupert Denison she cares about.”

“Likes him, does she?” said Nigel.

“Very much,” answered Bertha, who rarely used a strong expression, but whose eyes made the words emphatic.

Nigel whistled. “Oh, well, if it’s as bad as that!”

“It is. Quite.”

“Fancy! Lucky chap, old Rupert. Well, we must rush it through for them, I suppose. About the play—you want something serious, what price Shakespeare?”

“No price. Let’s go to the Russian Ballet.”

“Capital!” cried Nigel, moving quickly to the telephone in case she should change her mind; “and we’ll dine at the Carlton first. May I use your telephone?”

“Please!”

CHAPTER III

NIGEL

THE relation between Bertha and Nigel Hillier was a rather curious one. He had met her when she was eighteen. The attraction had been sudden, violent and mutual; and she was quite prepared to marry him against all opposition. There had been a good deal in her own family, because Nigel was what is euphemistically called without means, and she was the daughter of a fashionable London vicar who, though distinguished for his eloquence and extremely popular, successful and social, had a comparatively small income and a positively large family. In a short time Nigel—not Bertha—succumbed to the family opposition and the general prudent disapproval of worldly friends. He wrote and told Bertha that he was afraid after all they were right; persuaded to this view by having meanwhile met the only daughter of a millionaire when staying for a week-end at a country house. The girl had fallen in love with him, and was practically independent.

A few months after his gorgeous wedding, described and photographed with the greatest enthusiasm in all the illustrated papers, Bertha married Percy Kellynch, to the great satisfaction of her relations. Nigel was, by then, a lost illusion, a disappointed ideal; she did not long resent his defection and it cured her passion, but she despised him for what she regarded as the baseness of his motive.

She loved and looked up to Percy, but her marriage to him had not been at the time one of romance—to her great regret. She would have liked it to be, for she was one of those ardent souls to whom the glamour of love was everything; she could never worship false gods. But Bertha had a warm, grateful nature, and finding him even better than she expected, her affection threw out roots and tendrils; became deeper and deeper; her experience with Nigel had made her particularly appreciative of Percy’s good qualities. She was expansive, affectionate and constant; and she really cared far more about Percy now than she did when she married him. And this, though she was quite aware that he was entirely wanting in several things that she had particularly valued in Nigel (a sense of humour for one), and that he had inherited rather acutely the depressing Kellynch characteristic of taking oneself seriously.

Percy, on the other hand, had been quite carried away by her rosebud charm and prettiness, and he had continued to regard her as a pet and a luxury (for he was pre-eminently one of that large class of people who see only the obvious). But he had never realised her complexities, and was quite unaware of her depth and strength of mind. He was proud of her popularity, and had never known a jealous moment. Since they had never had a shadow of a quarrel, theirs might certainly be described as a happy marriage; although Bertha had always found it from the first rather deficient in the elements of