“How sweet of you, Dan! And you won’t marry one of these girls here?”
“Don’t fill the bill, Lady Galorey.”
“Oh, you have a sweetheart at home, then?”
“All off!” he assured her blithely, and rose, tall and straight and slender.
The Duchess of Breakwater had come in, indeed she never failed to when there was any question of finding Blair.
Dan stood straightly before the two women of an old race, and the American didn’t suggest any line of noble ancestors whatsoever. His features were rather agglomerate; his muscles were possibly not the perfect elastic specimens that were those muscles whose strain and sinew had been made from the same stock for generations. He was, nevertheless, very good to look on. Any woman would have thought so, and he bent his blond head as he looked at the Duchess of Breakwater with something like benevolence, something of his father’s kindness in his clear blue eyes. Neither of the noble ladies vaguely understood him. His hostess thought him “a good sort,” not half bad, a splendid catch, and the other woman, only a few years his senior, was in love with him. The duchess had married at eighteen, tired of her bargain at twenty, and found herself a widow at twenty-five. She held a telegram in her hand.
“We’ve got the box for Mandalay to-night at the Gaiety, and let’s motor in.”
Only Lady Galorey hesitated, disappointed.
“Too bad—I had specially arranged for Lady Grandcourt to drive over with Eileen. I thought it would be a ripping chance for her to see Dan.”
When at length the duchess had succeeded in getting Dan to herself toward the end of the day in the red room, after tea, she said: