Mrs. Grafton put an arm about her waist and gave her a little squeeze.

“I PICKED up a genuine piece of old Sèvres yesterday,” said Diana. “In a funny little shop in Soho. The man obviously didn’t know its worth. His shop was full of the most awful oddments.”

“Was it the same man who palmed off that faked—”

“No, it wasn't,” said Diana haughtily. “And I wish you wouldn’t keep ramming that down my throat. I know I was taken in, but it was over a month ago, when I didn’t know anything about china.”

“You don’t know much now,” said Haskin, twinkling.

“Anyway, I pointed the flaw out to you in that jug you wanted to buy.”

“I should have discovered it—”

“The point is,” said Diana triumphantly, “that I saw it first. By the way, I’m coming with you to Christie’s this afternoon. My husband’s very keen on Chinese stuff, and I’m hoping to find something really good.”

“If it’s really good, you’ll have to pay a big price for it, young lady.”

“What I’m looking for is—is a Ming vase,” said Diana, bending studiously over her catalogue, and fingering the jagged piece of china that hung on gold chain about her neck.

“Lots of us are doing that,” said Haskin pessimistically. “I suppose you’re dancing, tonight, as usual?”

“I haven’t danced more than twice since I came to town!” flamed Diana.

“Nor you have. Gone off it?”

“N—I’m not in the mood for it. As a matter of fact, I am going out tonight, with an old friend. To the Empress Rooms.”

The old friend, one Stephen Markham, found Diana changed for the worse. He thought she seemed sad, and her newly-acquired habit of talking wisely, but not very learnedly, of Chinese porcelain, palled on him.

“Look here, Di, what’s the matter with you?” he demanded at last. “I don’t know anything about the what-you-may-call-it Ming stuff, and I don’t want to. So chuck it!”

“Ah!” said Diana. “I used to think as you do. But I assure you, Stephen, it’s a most fascinating subject. I don’t know an awful lot about it, of course—”

“Quite enough,” said Stephen, who had known her from her babyhood, and therefore never erred on the side of politeness.

“But my husband is a great authority on it.”

“Oh, good lord!” groaned Stephen. He found that Diana had stiffened in every line of her body, and was staring fixedly across the hall. “What’s up?”

“No—nothing,” said Diana relapsing.

“Then shall we dance?”

“No—I mean—Stephen, can we sit in the outside room? It’s so hot here.”

“Certainly,” he answered, rather mystified. “Do you feel ill?”

“No—thank you. Just too hot.”

At the far end of the hall she had just seen George. George was fox-trotting with a girl she didn't know. Diana was quivering with indignation. That George—her husband—should dare to take a bare-backed creature out to dance! And what was George doing, circling round a dancing hall? He, who when she had asked him, had refused to learn to dance at all?”