It continually irked him that when he was with Ladies of the Beau Monde or the ‘Fashionable Impures’, they never allowed him to do his own hunting.

Almost before he made up his mind that he was interested in them, they were making it unmistakably obvious that they were very interested in him.

Last night he had known that only a matter of time and opportunity would enable him, if he wished, to go to bed with both the women the Princess had introduced him to and accordingly he found himself retreating rather than advancing.

He spent more time thinking of the troubles of the woman in love than of the considerable attractions of the other two.

He had known that she was sincere and he liked the manner in which she spoke naturally and unpretentiously in order to plead the cause of the man she loved.

The Earl had long ago admitted to himself that one thing he hoped to find in a woman, was a certain unpredictability.

It was like playing a game of chess with an experienced opponent whose move one never expected and it was therefore exciting and stimulating.

Unfortunately the women he met up with were predictable to the point when he could anticipate every move they made and every word they said.

It was this that made him afraid of marriage.

How could he endure the boredom of knowing what remark his wife would make before she made it? Of knowing that there were no surprises in store for him tomorrow, the day after or the day after that?

There was one thing about horses, he told himself often enough, that even the best trained and the most reliable could sometimes surprise, disconcert and even infuriate one.

When he thought of horses, he remembered the phrase that Lord Alvanley had read aloud and he told himself that it was unmistakably true that, in a race for his affections, his horses came in first.

Nevertheless he decided that he would have a look at the little milliner again.

He would doubtless be disillusioned, but at least it would be amusing, if nothing else, to make her eyes flash with anger and then watch her force herself to be humbly subservient.

Mrs. Burton’s shop was the next in the street and he would reach it within a few footsteps.

He stopped almost as if he was reconnoitring his position as he had often done in France during the War.

Even as he stared into a shop window, which, although he was unaware of it, was a pharmacist’s, he heard a voice cry from a carriage,

“Vargus! Is it really you?”

There was no mistaking who spoke and, as the Earl took his hat from his head, he thought it unfortunate that he had encountered Lady Adelaide so soon after returning to London.