What could Vansittart do but accept? With many deprecatory glances at Joan--which, as she rode on looking straight before her, she either did not, or would not see,--he accompanied uncle and niece through the pale sunshine which now bathed the wet streets and shone upon the dripping bushes and bright green foliage of the trees, to the door of Sir Thomas’ tastefully beflowered mansion in one of the largest West-end squares. Here, before the groom had had time to wait upon his mistress, he was off his horse, and at her stirrup. "Forgive me," he pleaded, as she eluded his help and sprang lightly down. "I could not resist the temptation!" Had she heard him? She had marched on into the house. "She will not appear at luncheon," he told himself bitterly, as he accompanied the very evidently friendly Sir Thomas up the steps and through the hall. "She will make some plausible excuse to avoid me, as she has always done, worse luck!" CHAPTER II But for once Lord Vansittart’s good star seemed in the ascendant. Joan was seated at the end of the long table in the big, finely furnished diningroom, where luncheon was already being handed round by the men in Sir Thomas’ fawn-and-silver livery to some ladies and a man or two who had dropped in and been invited to stay by Lady Thorne. As the kindly, middle-aged, motherly-looking lady welcomed him with what he felt to be pleasurable astonishment, he felt less sickened by the mingled scent of savoury entrées and the pines, forced strawberries and rich rose blooms that decorated the luncheon-table in profusion. Perhaps--she seemed to smile upon him, almost to sympathize, indeed, as Sir Thomas had made no secret of doing some months previously--his hostess might stand his friend in his hitherto dismally unsuccessful wooing. While he accepted a vacant place on her right hand, and chatted about his travels, his ear was pitched to hear what Joan was talking so brightly about to Lady Mound and her daughters at the other end of the table. He lost the thread of Lady Thorne’s remarks, until she startled him agreeably by asking him whether they would meet him that afternoon at the concert at Dulwich House. "Are you--is Miss Thorne--going?" he stammered. "I--of course I only arrived last night, but Lady Dulwich is such an old friend, I know I should be quite the _bien-venu_!" "Joan, you are coming with me to Lady Dulwich’s this afternoon, of course?" asked her aunt, when there was a lull in the conversation. "No? Why not?"