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Only Lady Alard enquired after the absent Julian.

"I wonder he didn't come down with you," she murmured. "I sent him a very special invitation."

"Bah!" said Sir John.

"Why do you say 'Bah,' dear?"

"Doris, tell your mother why I said 'Bah.'"

"Oh, Father, how do I know?"

"You must be very stupid, then. I give leave to any one of you to explain why I said 'Bah,'" and Sir John stumped out of the room.

"Really, your father is impossible," sighed Lady Alard.

Mary did not talk much—her tongue skimmed the surface of Christmas: the dances they had been to, the people they had had to dinner. She looked fagged and anxious-strung. At her first opportunity she went upstairs to take off her travelling clothes and dress for dinner. Of dressing and undressing Mary made always a lovely ceremony—very different from Jenny's hasty scuffle and Doris's veiled mysteries. She lingered over it as over a thing she loved; and Jenny loved to watch her—all the careful, charming details, the graceful acts and poses, the sweet scents. Mary moved like the priest of her own beauty, with her dressing table for altar and her maid for acolyte—the latter an olive-skinned French girl, who with a topknot of black hair gave a touch of chinoiserie to the proceedings.