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his attention from the pretty damsel who had responded with a roguish glance to his appreciative smile. There was no frustrated thirst for adventure, he reflected, with amusement. “You will take the shine out of every other female at your rout.”
    “Oui,” agreed Madame le Best, with what she fancied was a Gallic gesture. “It is assured!”
    Lady Davenham reminded herself that Malcolm’s appearance at her rout was the first step toward settling him with an eligible wife, and that Malcolm had threatened not to appear unless she obliged him concerning this matter of a gown. “Have it your own way, Malcolm,” she said, resigned, as she permitted Madame le Best to guide her toward the atelier. “You generally do!”
    Generally he achieved his object with a great deal less effort, Sir Malcolm reflected, as the milliner disappeared with Thea into the workroom, there to subject her to a stern lecture upon the underpinnings most flattering to the current mode—a long chemise of linen, reaching well below the knees; light flexible stays; a cotton petticoat. in warm weather and fine flannel in the cold, and then the gown or slip; or, if one was very daring, nothing but tights—and, in general, to give her ladyship a world of good and wholly unappreciated advice.
    As his cousin was initiated into the mysteries of the atelier, Sir Malcolm surveyed the showroom, a small abstracted frown on his sun-bronzed brow. No dislike for furnishings in the Chinese taste prompted that indication of dissatisfaction; after life abroad, he was finding England very tame. If only Lord Davenham’s attention might be diverted from his garden to his wife, then his wife’s attention might be diverted from Sir Malcolm, who consequently would be free to pursue his own preferred diversions, among which were not levées and soirées and routs.
    As Sir Malcolm frowned upon the showroom, Melly in turn contemplated him, from the corner of the chamber where she had withdrawn in hope of placating her aunt. Sir Malcolm was positively cudgeling his brain, she decided, else he would have long since become aware that a very merry pair of eyes peered at him over the top of a volume of The Gallery of Fashion. Melly didn’t think Sir Malcolm was generally oblivious to such things. A resourceful lass, she closed the book and callously let it drop, conduct that would have appalled her aunt, who had carefully collected each of the monthly issues of The Gallery, and who was very proud to possess the entire nine volumes, containing in all two hundred fifty-one hand-colored aquatints.
    “What the deuce?” inquired Sir Malcolm, startled by the noise of the falling book. Setting aside the puzzle of whether or not Thea still nourished a tendre for him, and the resultant puzzle of whether or not he had to consider her sensibilities—Sir Malcolm always considered the sensibilities of the ladies who on his behalf had been stricken by Cupid’s darts—he turned to discover the distraction’s source.
    By a mock-bamboo bookcase stood a girl, and at her feet a book. She had clasped her hands to her breast in an attempt to look dismayed—an attempt wholly set at naught by the dimples in her cheeks and the twinkle in her big brown eyes. Sir Malcolm, result of long experience, immediately recognized a lure cast out. Gallantly, he bowed, and with a bewitching smile restored the damsel’s book.
    “Why, bless my soul!” giggled Melly, with fluttering eyelashes and an arch glance. As Sir Malcolm parted his lips to respond in kind, a stem voice issued from the atelier.
    “Eh, bien!” said that voice. “Monsieur, regardez!”
    “If that ain’t just my luck!” Melly sighed.
    In Madame’s hand were several sketches, and on her face a darkling look. She nudged Lady Davenham, whose doubtful attitude was doubtless result of Monsieur’s conversation with Madame’s own scapegrace niece. “Allons! We shall make Monsieur’s eyes pop right out of his head.”
    Roused by