CHAPTER XVI.
THE PART OF A FLIRT.
Quite unconscious of the stab in the back, so to speak, which the cunning Captain Murpoint had delivered him, Leicester spent the evening in entertaining his guests, Lord Fitz and Lady Ethel.
In the morning Leicester and his guests walked over to the Park.
He would have liked to have been alone, but that was impossible under the circumstances, so he contented himself with hoping that he might get an opportunity of speaking to Violet alone.
But Violet had spent the wakeful night in planning for herself a desperate course of action.
She was, as she told herself at breakfast time, prepared to meet "the flirt" on his own ground.
Nothing would do for Mrs. Mildmay but that she insisted that the Cedars' party should remain all day to dinner, and to see the evening out, and a footman was dispatched with the invitation for Mr. and Mrs. Dodson.