at he
required from her.

'Young people nowadays,' said Miss Abingdon, ascribing a riper age to
Mr. Lawrence than he altogether approved--'young people nowadays think
that everything that concerns themselves is what they call their own
business. They talk as though they lived in some desert cave instead
of in the midst of the world. I am on thorns sometimes when the
servants are in the room; after all, a man may be only a footman, and
yet is not necessarily a deaf-mute.'

Peter and Jane, meanwhile, had strolled into the picture-gallery, with
its softly shaded lights and long vistas of flowering plants and palms.
There was about them to-night something which seemed to set them apart.
Few persons cared to disturb them, even by a greeting, as they sat side
by side in the corridor or walked together down the long gallery. Jane
Erskine had put off that air, which suited her so admirably, of seeming
to be always under an open sky; she had left it behind with her short
skirt and the motor-cap which she loved to pull down over her eyes.
This evening in shimmering white satin, and with a string of pearls
round her throat, she looked what she was--a very beautiful and very
distinguished young woman. The tempered light of the room seemed to
deepen the colour in her cheeks and to bring out the bright tints of
her hair; her lips parted in a smile, and her eyes had radiance in them.

She and Peter mingled with the throng of dancers again, and then, not
waiting until the music had finished, they left the ballroom by the
farther door where Mrs. Ogilvie was standing.

Peter stopped when he saw her, and looked at her a little anxiously.
'You should not be standing, should you?' he said, in his kindly way;
'you look tired.'

Mrs. Ogilvie gave one of her enigmatic smiles. 'Who would not be
tired?' she said. 'Was there ever such an extraordinary way of amusing
oneself as to stand in a draughty doorway in the middle of the night,
shaking hands with some hundreds of people whom one doesn't want to
see!'

She sat down on a sofa and watched the two figures as they passed down
the long corridor. The mechanical smile of welcome with which she had
greeted half the county this evening had not died away from her face;
she sat upright on the satin-covered sofa. There was about her an air
of strength, of eminence almost, which seemed to place her genuine
ugliness above criticism. Her dress was of some heavy purple stuff
which few wome