"My dear Mr. Ernshaw, whatever you have to say, I'm afraid I will have to ask you to keep it just for a little," said Sir Arthur, as the door swung open. "Here is Koda Bux, and he does not allow me to be late for dinner; he has many virtues, but that is the best of them. Mr. Rayburn, you will take Carol in? Mr. Ernshaw, will you give your arm to Miss Russell, and Vane and I will bring up the rear."
"Dad," said Vane, as he gripped his father's arm, "you have helped to do God's work to-night; look at them!"
"You did more when you got out of the cab at the top of the gardens here," he whispered in reply.
"I didn't do that, dad; she did. She knew, and I didn't. God bless her."
"Amen," said his father. "And now we will return to earth and go and eat."
There were not many more delightful dinners eaten in London that night than what Cecil Rayburn called his betrothal feast. He and Carol now understood each other thoroughly. Vane and his father also knew the circumstances so far as they were concerned, and a little more. Ernshaw and Dora, each knowing just a little more than the others did, began to make friends fast, and therefore rapidly, but Dora was still declassée. Carol had already been lifted beyond the confines of that half-sphere which is inhabited by so many thousands of women who are neither maiden, wife, nor widow. Dora was still a dweller in it, knowing all its infamy and shame, and knowing, too, that awful necessity which is so often at once the equivalent and the excuse for sin.
Everyone took Sir Arthur's hint, and the conversation rattled on around the table as lightly as it might have around any other dinner table in London. Carol and Sir Arthur and Rayburn had it mostly to themselves at first, but after a little the conversation grew more general. Dora and Carol engaged in a really brilliant discussion on the subject of Mrs. Lynn Linton's last book, with the result that Carol said that she wouldn't live for ever at any price, to which Dora replied with just a suspicion of a note of sadness in her voice.
"Yes, Carol, I quite agree with you, or at least if I were you I should do."
"Which," said Ernshaw, "is, I think, as nearly as possible the same thing. Surely if one cannot agree with one's self——"
"No, Mr. Ernshaw," said Dora, putting her elbows on the table and her chin between her hands. "No, I'm afraid I can hardly agree with you there. After all, our worst enemies are those of our own household, by which of course I mean our immediate surroundings. It is this awful necessity to live, to eat and to have a place to sleep in. Of course you are thinking of what Talleyrand said to the young aristocrat who wanted to live for nothing."