On the contrary, I am very glad to have been able to assist the Fates as far as I have done." "Assist the Fates!" gasped Mrs.Van Stuyler, helping herself shakingly to sugar, while Miss Zaidie folded a gossamer slice of bread and butter and began to eat it; "I think, Lord Redgrave, that if you knew _all_ the circumstances, you would say that you were working against them." "My dear Mrs.Van Stuyler," he replied, as he filled his own coffee cup, "I quite agree with you as to certain fates, but the Fates which I mean are the ones which, with good or bad reason, I think are working on my side.

Besides, I _do_ know all the circumstances, or at least the most important of them.

That knowledge is, in fact, my principal excuse for bringing you so unceremoniously above the clouds." As he said this he took a sideway glance at Miss Zaidie.

She dropped her eyelids and went on eating her bread and butter; but there was a little deepening of the flush on her cheeks which was to him as the first flush of sunrise to a benighted wanderer.
There was a rather awkward silence after this.

Miss Zaidie stirred the coffee in her cup with a dainty Queen Anne spoon, and seemed to concentrate the whole of her attention upon the operation.