ons were really
fixed on Miss Daphne?--or his ambitions, which to the uncle seemed
nearer the truth.

"Well, where is the nephew?" said Cecilia Boyson's voice in his ear.

The General turned. He saw a sharp, though still young face, a thin and
willowy figure, attired in white silk, a _pince-nez_ on the high-pitched
nose, and a cool smile. Unconsciously his back stiffened. Miss Boyson
invariably roused in him a certain masculine antagonism.

"I should be glad if you would tell me," he said, with some formality.
"There are two or three people here to whom he should be introduced."

"Has he been picnicking with the Maddisons?" The voice was shrill,
perhaps malicious.

"I believe they took him to Arlington, and somewhere else afterwards."

"Ah," said Cecilia, "there they are."

The General looked towards the door and saw his nephew enter, behind a
mother and daughter whom, as it seemed to him, their acquaintances in
the crowd around them greeted with a peculiar cordiality; the mother,
still young, with a stag-like carriage of the head, a long throat,
swathed in white tulle, and grizzled hair, on which shone a spray of
diamonds; the daughter, equally tall and straight, repeating her
mother's beauty with a bloom and radiance of her own. Innocent and
happy, with dark eyes and a soft mouth, Miss Maddison dropped a little
curtsey to the presidential pair, and the room turned to look at her as
she did so.

"A very sweet-looking girl," said the General warmly. "Her father is, I
think, a professor."

"He was. He is now just a writer of books. But Elsie was brought up in
Cambridge. How did Mr. Roger know them?"

"His Eton tutor told him to go and see them."

"I thought Miss Floyd expected him to-day?" said Miss Boyson carelessly,
adjusting her eyeglass.

"It was a mistake, a misunderstanding," replied the General hurriedly.
"Miss Floyd's party is put off till next week."

"Daphne is just coming in," said Miss Boyson.

The General turned again. The watchful Cecilia was certain that _he_ was
not in love with Daphne. But the nephew--the inordinately handsome, and
by now much-courted young man--what was the real truth about him?

Cecilia recognized--with Mrs. Verrier--that merely to put the question
involved a certain tribute to young Barnes. He had at any rate done his
fortune-hunting, if fortune-hunting it were, with decorum.

"Miss Floyd is looking well to-night," remarked the General.

Cecilia did not reply. She