But it happened that Sybil Linforth was looking on from her chair in the corner, and the corner was very close to the spot where for a moment Violet Oliver had lost countenance.

She looked sharply at Sir John Casson, who might have noticed or might not.

His face betrayed nothing whatever.

He went on talking placidly, but Mrs.Linforth ceased to listen to him.
Violet Oliver waltzed with her partner once more round the room.
Then she said: "Let us stop!" and in almost the same breath she added, "Oh, there's your friend." Linforth turned and saw standing just within the doorway his friend Shere Ali.
"You could hardly tell that he was not English," she went on; and indeed, with his straight features, his supple figure, and a colour no darker than many a sunburnt Englishman wears every August, Shere Ali might have passed unnoticed by a stranger.

It seemed that he had been watching for the couple to stop dancing.