"Not you," and for the moment he meant it; the particular she of the hour feasting on the nectar her soul loves, never dreaming that the next passable looking female in propinquity with him will be also steeped to the lips in the same food, "not you," he said, with a fond look.
"Thank you," she said, prettily, and with the faith of her early teens, "I must tell you a pretty compliment a gentleman paid me at the 'Kirmiss' last season, he said 'I was a madrigal in Dresden china.'"
"Too cold, too cold," he said, thickly, managing to press her fingers as they rose from the table, ere she laid her hand on the arm of Mr. Smyth, to whom she had been allotted, but who never spoiled his dinner by giving beauty her natural food.
On Mr. Dale declining to linger, leading his hostess back to her pretty drawing-room, she said in his ear:
"You have dubbed me queen of Holmnest, therefore must obey when I bid you back to the dining-room for a smoke."
CHAPTER VI.
COFFEE AND CHIT-CHAT.
"What a lovely little home you have, Mrs. Gower," said her friend, Mrs. Smyth, seating herself near her hostess, the pale blue plush of the padded chair contrasting well with her fair hair, pink cheeks and pretty grey eyes.
"That chair becomes you at all events, dear," said her hostess, seeing that a maid deftly passed coffee bright as decanted wine, afterwards small bouquets of beautiful pansies and clematis among her guests, from huge glass and Japanese bowls.