"Ah, you are always chaffing me, Miss Windsor," he pleaded.
"I knew very well what you were thinking, sir. That you could cut Colonel Featherstone out in no time. Now, were you not?"
"Not at all. I was thinking of you. Were not my languishing glances turned toward you?"
"Yes, but the languish was all for Mrs. Oswald, and not for me. But it is time to go to dinner now, Lord Brompton. You are permitted to disturb the téte-à-téte and Mrs. Carey's peace of mind."
"If you send me away, I suppose that I must obey. A hostess is a despot whom no one may defy."
Miss Windsor smiled pleasantly at the Duke of Bayswater, who just then offered her his arm with great solemnity. Geoffrey bowed to her and the Duke, and walked slowly into the adjoining room.
In a dimly-lighted corner he saw a tall, heavily-built man, with a long red mustache, talking to a remarkably beautiful woman.
"Mrs. Carey and old Charlie Featherstone?" he said to himself, as he stopped to look at them and to await a pause in their conversation before he interrupted them.
"Why, it is Eleanor Leigh!" he exclaimed a moment later, as she turned her head from the shadow of a great Japanese screen, behind which the pair had sought shelter from prying eyes.
"Eleanor Leigh, my old sweetheart, to whom I bade farewell in the dark library of my old tutor's home, seven years ago."