It is to be presumed my advice was followed quite literally, for the next time I dined at Rutland Gate the party had doubled in size, and no one got enough to drink. Sonia very dutifully granted dances to all the male guests and, so far as I could see, impartially encouraged all to make love to her. Certainly she discussed the possibility of platonic friendship with me at 10.45, when I had hardly finished my dinner; and four hours later, when Valentine Arden was changing his second buttonhole, I observed the expression of weariness that settled onto his passionless, immobile features when rash newcomers sought to shake his precocious celibacy.
"When does a girl get over the awkward age?" he demanded.
"At death," I hazarded, and he left me in disgust, because he clearly wanted to tell me the answer himself.
Thus to some extent Amy Loring succeeded where Raney and I had failed, but her ultimate defeat was more humiliating than ours. After the last War Fund meeting of the season I went up stairs to find a cup of tea and say good-bye to Sonia before starting out on my autumn campaign among the electors of Wiltshire. Crabtree was with her, and in a jaded, end-of-season spirit they were discussing future arrangements and enumerating the houses they "had to" visit.
"When are you going to House of Steynes, George?" Sonia asked.
I gave her the date, and we found we were invited for the same week.
"You're not selected, are you, Tony?" she asked Crabtree.
"Well, I don't quite know how I'm fixed," he answered, without committing himself. "I'm due with the Fordyces for the Twelfth, and from there...."
He worked out a chain of houses running from the south-west to the north-east of Scotland. House of Steynes, of course, lay across his path; the only question was whether he could fit in....