Lady Anne Garland was sitting in Mrs. Cresswell’s drawing-room. It was a charming room, with its domed ceiling, its panelled walls, its long windows, its curtains and brocades of dull orange and glowing brown, with its porcelains, its bronzes, and its masses of yellow and white roses in old china bowls and slender glasses.  
Anne herself, in a dress of some gleaming material, pale primrose in colour, was sitting on an Empire sofa. The warm brown of its brocade made a delightful harmony with the colour of her dress—in fact, she looked entirely in keeping with her surroundings. A white-haired man, with blue eyes and wearing faultless evening clothes, was sitting on the sofa beside her; and Anne was asking herself where in the name of wonder she had seen him before. Something [Pg 132]in his manner seemed familiar, or was it, perhaps, his eyes, his keen old blue eyes under their shaggy eyebrows? He had been introduced to her early in the evening, and somehow there had seemed at once a curious and indefinable sympathy between them, one which had sprung to life with the first conventional words they had uttered. Throughout the evening he had monopolized her—unquestionably monopolized her—yet entirely without appearing to do so. And over and over again Anne was asking herself when and where she had seen him before.
 
She glanced at him now as she slowly waved her fan—a delicate thing of mother-of-pearl and fine old cobwebby lace softly yellow with age. Anne possessed the trick of fan-waving in its subtlest form, a trick—or art—she had inherited from an ancestor of more than a century ago, one Dolores di Mendova, a very noted beauty of the Spanish court, from whom Anne had also inherited her hair, her creamy skin, and her panther-like grace.
 
General Carden turned and saw that she was watching him. A faint rose colour tinged the ivory of Anne’s face.
 
 
“I was wondering,” she said, explanatory, “where it was that I had seen you before.”
 
General Carden smiled, a gay old smile. “I can tell you where I have seen you, though whether you have deigned to notice me is quite another matter.”
 
“Yes?” queried Anne the fan fluttering to and fro.
 
“I have frequently seen you driving in the Park,” said General Carden. “You in your carriage, I in my car.”
 
“Yes?” mused Anne, still doubtful.
 
“You do not remember?” asked General Carden. He was frankly disappointed.
 
“On the contrary, I remember perfectly. I confess I had forgotten the fact till you mentioned it. Yet somehow it does not quite explain—” She broke off.
 
“Explain?” asked General Carden.
 
Anne laughed. “Explain the quite absurd notion that I have actually spoken to you before. Something in your manner, your speech, seems almost familiar. I fancied I must have known you—not intimately, of course, but slightly.”
 
“I fear,” he regretted, “that I have not had [Pg 134]that pleasure. I shall hope now to be able to make up for my previous loss. You live in town?”
 
“The greater part of the year,” said Anne. “I spend three or four months in the country.”
 
“Which, no doubt, you like,” replied General Carden courteously. “Being young, you are able to enjoy it. I prefer London. I only leave town during August, when I go abroad. And the whole time I wish I were in England. An unprofitable method of spending a yearly month of one’s life. Once I—” He broke off. “I am too old for travelling now,” he ended.
 
“Isn’t that rather—nonsense?” said Anne, with a faint hint of a smile, and glancing at the upright figure beside her.
 
General Carden straightened his shoulders. She was candid—absolutely candid—in her remark.
 
“Very charming of you to suggest it, Lady Anne,” he said, and he tried unavailingly to keep the pleasure out of his voice. “Perhaps after all——”
 
“Yes,” smiled Anne, “after all, you don’t find it quite as disagreeable as you pretend.”
 
 
“Ah, well!” he said.
 
There was a pleasant little silence. Anne watched the groups of people in the room, sitting or standing in intimate conversation. There was an atmosphere of airy gaiety about the place, a lightness, an effervescence. Listlessness or boredom was entirely absent. In one of the farthest groups was her friend, Muriel Lancing, with whom she was staying. She was an elfin-like, dainty figure in a green dress, on which shone a brilliant gleam of diamonds. Muriel herself was sparkling to-night like a bit of escaped quicksilver.
 
Rather nearer was another woman, tall and massive. Her figure was undoubtedly good, but her pose gave one the faintest suspicion that she was conscious of that fact. She reminded one of a statue which had become slightly animated by some accident. Apparently, too, she had never forgotten the fact of having been a statue, and wished other people not to forget it either. Her face was a faultless oval, and her hair worn in a Madonna-like style. But beyond the oval and the hair the Madonna-like impression ceased. Her face was hard, there was none of the exquisite warmth, the tender humanity seen in the paintings of the Virgin Mother.
 
General Carden was also looking at Mrs. Sheldon, whom, it may be remembered, he had seen on a previous occasion in the Park, a day now three or four weeks old. Anne noticed the direction of his glance.
 
“Do you know her?” she asked suddenly, then added as an afterthought, “She is a friend of mine.” Anne did not state that it was a friendship of only two years’ standing, and one which existed infinitely more on Mrs. Sheldon’s side than on her own.
 
“I once had the honour of knowing her fairly intimately,” replied General Carden. “We still exchange bows and civil speeches, but—well, I fancy I remind her of an episode she wishes to forget—a perfectly unimpeachable little episode as far as she was concerned, of course.”
 
Anne glanced at him sideways. There was almost a hard note in his voice, which had not escaped her. She saw his profile clean-cut against the dark panelling of the room. And then a sudden little light of illumination sprang [Pg 137]to her eyes. She had all at once discovered of whom it was he reminded her. There was in h............