Lady Valleys had not shown her
usual 'savoir faire'. She had told her husband. A meeting of this sort
in a shop celebrated for little save its wedding cakes was in a sense of
no importance; but, being disturbed already by the news of Miltoun, it
seemed to them both nothing less than sinister, as though the heavens
were in league for the demolition of their house. To Lord Valleys it was
peculiarly mortifying, because of his real admiration for his daughter,
and because he had paid so little attention to his wife's warning of
some weeks back. In consultation, however, they had only succeeded in
deciding that Lady Valleys should talk with her. Though without much
spiritual insight, they had, each of them, a certain cool judgment;
and were fully alive to the danger of thwarting Barbara. This had
not prevented Lord Valleys from expressing himself strongly on the
'confounded unscrupulousness of that fellow,' and secretly forming
his own plan for dealing with this matter. Lady Valleys, more deeply
conversant with her daughter's nature, and by reason of femininity more
lenient towards the other sex, had not tried to excuse Courtier, but
had thought privately: 'Babs is rather a flirt.' For she could not
altogether help remembering herself at the same age.

Summoned thus unexpectedly, Barbara, her lips very firmly pressed
together, took her stand, coolly enough, by her father's writing-table.

Seeing her suddenly appear, Lord Valleys instinctively relaxed his
frown; his experience of men and things, his thousands of diplomatic
hours, served to give him an air of coolness and detachment which he was
very far from feeling. In truth he would rather have faced a hostile mob
than his favourite daughter in such circumstances. His tanned face with
its crisp grey moustache, his whole head indeed, took on, unconsciously,
a more than ordinarily soldier-like appearance. His eyelids drooped a
little, his brows rose slightly.

She was wearing a blue wrap over her evening frock, and he seized
instinctively on that indifferent trifle to begin this talk.

"Ah! Babs, have you been out?"

Alive to her very finger-nails, with every nerve tingling, but showing
no sign, Barbara answered:

"No; on the roof of the tower."

It gave her a real malicious pleasure to feel the perplexity beneath
her father's dignified exterior. And detecting that covert mockery, Lord
Valleys said dryly:

"Star-gazing?"

Then, with that sudden resolution peculiar