"

"We have all been a little engrossed, have we not?" she murmured. "I
hope that you are satisfied with the way things have turned out."

"Nothing shall induce me to talk politics or empire-saving to-night," he
declared, with a smile. "I have other things to say."

"Tell me why you asked us all to dine so suddenly," she enquired. "I do
not know whether it is my fancy, but there seems to be an air of
celebration about. Is there any announcement to be made?"

He shook his head.

"None. The party was just a whim of Maggie's."

They both looked across towards the ballroom, where she was dancing with
Chalmers.

"Maggie is very beautiful to-night," Naida said. "I could scarcely
listen to my neighbour's conversation at dinner time for looking at her.
Yet she has the air all the time of living in a dream, as though
something had happened which had lifted her right away from us all. I
began to wonder," she added, "whether, after all, Oscar Immelan had not
told me the truth, and whether we should not be drinking her health and
yours before the evening was over."

"You could scarcely believe that," he whispered, "if you have any memory
at all."

There was a faint touch of pink in her cheeks, a tinge of colour as
delicate as the passing of a gleam of sunshine over a sea-glistening
shell.

"But Englishmen are so unfaithful," she sighed.

"Then I at least am an exception," Nigel answered swiftly. "The words
which you checked upon my lips the last time we were alone together
still live in my heart. I think, Naida, the time has come to say them."

Their immediate neighbours had deserted them. He leaned a little
towards her.

"You know so well that I love you, Naida," he said. "Will you be my
wife?"

She looked up at him, half laughing, yet with tears in her eyes. With an
impulsive little gesture, she caught his hand in hers for a moment.

"How horribly sure you must have felt of me," she complained, "to have
spoken here, with all these people around! Supposing I had told you that
my life's work lay amongst my own people, or that I had made up my mind
to marry Oscar Immelan, to console him for his great disappointment."

"I shouldn't have believed you," he answered, smiling.

"Conceit!" she exclaimed.

He shook his head.

"In a sense, of course, I am conceited," he replied. "I am the happiest
and proudest man here. I really think that after all we ought to turn it
into a celebration."

The band was playing a