* * * * * *
On the strength of this exciting conversation Greville-Mainwaring received a warmly uncritical reception when he casually arrived with his card-case the following week.
It must be confessed that, up to half an hour previously, he had forgotten Ferlie as completely as the tune so glibly cited on the night of the dance. He was going to a bridge party in the neighbourhood and the sudden recognition of her windows reminded him of a half-finished piece of work.
It might be amusing to take her out driving, with Briggs discreetly officiating at the wheel and the car half-closed. At any rate, he might as well see her again. Now he came to think of it, that unembarrassed survey of her fellow-creatures could not foreshadow Victorian innocence. And Clifford prided himself upon knowing the modern dancing girl for exactly what she was.
He was annoyed to find Ferlie "out." Gropingly, he fancied that she should have remained at home during calling hours, until his expected visit. Evidently, such a course had not occurred to her.
Mrs. Carmichael gave him tea at one end of the big drawing-room, full of Eastern spoil, and Peter strolled in for his, late, abstracted and unimpressed.
"I've heard that Ferlie is a decent dancer," he said.
And, "We shall always regret that if she, eventually, has a Season in Simla," said Mrs. Carmichael, "her father and I will not be there to see her a social success. Simla is always full of pretty girls, but, sometimes, I think that Ferlie has unusual charm."
Mainwaring, thwarted in his desire to see her again, began to agree. With Mr. Carmichael at home Clifford might, possibly, have been weighed himself in the balance and found wanting. The cooler judgment of Ferlie's father would not have placed the worldly goods, with which this young man might undertake to endow his daughter, favourably against the fact that he did not look as if he could ever have earned even a small portion of them on his own account, either in the past or future. The signs of dissipation on the not ill-looking, but weak, face must have stung to criticism the Puritan elements of a mind belonging essentially to the labourer who has borne the burden and the heat of the day. As things were, Peter took a more healthy interest in the make of the man's car than in his character, and Mrs. Carmichael saw no further than that here was a possibility of Ferlie's making up for that "K," lost to their branch of the Family.
Accordingly, Clifford Greville-Mainwaring began, rather frequently, to be found in the drawing-room of the house about to be sold over the Family's heads, and Ferlie, in a few hastily-bought frocks, frequented Thés Dansant and Private Views under the complacent eye of Lady Cardew; at which functions Clifford, invariably hovering, fascinated by her indifference to his marked attentions, waited to take her home.