truggled to compensate for the pain which he
had brought to Barbara.

"We were afraid you might be too much in request to come down here,"
said Sybil. "Eric, I've been invited to go to a dance in London next
week; I suppose you wouldn't like to chaperon me? Mother does so hate
leaving the country even for one night."

"Will it be very late? I can't do any work next day, if I don't get a
little sleep. As a matter of fact, haven't chaperons ceased to exist?"

"I don't know. I was invited by a man I met at the Warings. He's quite a
nice creature, but I can't dine and go even to a charity ball and dance
with him all night absolutely on my own. Mother wouldn't let me, even if
I wanted to."

Eric shrank from the prospect of sleepless hours in an overheated room.

"It's surprising what things _are_ done nowadays," he said without
committing himself.

"Surprising, yes. But we're rather behind the times in Lashmar. _You_
wouldn't like me to go alone, would you?"

"Certainly not!" If people began gossiping about Sybil and her nameless
admirer as they gossiped about Barbara and himself, he would very soon
drop the young man a plain hint. And he could never make Barbara see
that she wanted him to behave as he would allow no one to behave to his
own sister. . . . "I'll come if I'm not already booked up."

As he entered the Mill-House, Eric tried to lose himself in the
atmosphere of a place where he had spent Christmas for a quarter of a
century. His last night in London haunted him, and it was only by trying
to console his mother for the absence of her two younger boys that he
could avoid thinking of Barbara. There was a busy exchange of presents
after dinner, and next day he accompanied his parents to church, as he
had done for five and twenty years, finding peace and a welcome in the
worm-eaten pew, the cobwebbed window, the top-heavy decorations and the
familiar musty books. The state prayers were invoked therein on behalf
of "Victoria, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the Princess of Wales and
all the Royal Family." And there was an old hymnal with a loose binding;
for years Eric had slipped one of the Waverley Novels into its cover to
read during the sermon. . . . To-day he listened no more to the sermon
than in other years; he wondered what Barbara was doing. . . .

After the carols they lingered in the churchyard to greet their friends.
If only she would make up her mind that Jack was dead, there would be no
need for