Do you happen to know ?" She did not know.

A moment later, to his annoyance, Edgerton Lawn came up and asked her to dance; and she went with a smile and a whispered: "Wait for me--if you don't mind.

I'll come back to you." It was all very well to wait for her--and even to dance with her after that; but there appeared to be no peace for him in prospect, for Scott Innis came and took her away, and Gladys Orchil offered herself to him very prettily, and took him away; and after that, to his perplexity and consternation, a perfect furor for him seemed to set in and grow among the younger set, and the Minster twins had him, and Hilda Innis appropriated him, and Evelyn Cardwell, and even Mrs.Delmour-Carnes took a hand in the badgering.
At intervals he caught glimpses of Eileen through the gay crush around him; he danced with Nina, and suggested to her it was time to leave, but that young matron had tasted just enough to want more; and Eileen, too, was evidently having a most delightful time.

So he settled into the harness of pleasure and was good to the pink-and-white ones; and they told each other what a "dear" he was, and adored him more inconveniently than ever.
Truly enough, as he had often said, these younger ones were the charmingly wholesome and refreshing antidote to the occasional misbehaviour of the mature.

They were, as he also asserted, the hope and promise of the social fabric of a nation--this younger set--always a little better, a little higher-minded than their predecessors as the wheel of the years slowly turned them out in gay, eager, fearless throngs to teach a cynical generation the rudiments of that wisdom which blossoms most perfectly in the hearts of the unawakened.
Yes, he had frequently told himself all this; told it to others, too.
But, now, the younger set, _en masse_ and in detail, had become a little bit _cramponne_--a trifle too all-pervading.