We shall not need to hurry--their progress, gaining about a yard a minute, is slow and deliberate as a funeral. At the lowest step of the whole flight, Helen is aware of Frank Vanguard making his way through the crush, apparently with the intention of joining their party. In her distress, looking wildly round for help, she catches sight of her father's grizzled head above the surface; and, meeting his eye, telegraphs for assistance. Sir Henry, whose redeeming point is the care he takes of his daughter, makes no cessation of edging, sliding, bowing, and begging pardon, till he reaches her side, and thus places himself in a false position as regards the ladies he has lately left. They cling to him with annoying persistence, and he condemns himself, very forcibly too, though below his breath, more than once for having a daughter "out," and yet choosing to know such women as Mrs. Battersea and her sister, Kate Cremorne. He must not introduce them to Mrs. Lascelles, as they obviously wish; he _will_ not introduce them to Helen, though they would like this too; and how can he ignore them completely, when he is engaged to supper this very night at their house? With all his careless selfishness, it annoyed Sir Henry exceedingly to be guilty of a rudeness or unkindness towards any one, and he formed more good resolutions to avoid doubtful society for the future in the half-dozen paces he waded through that stream of muslin four feet deep, and all the colours of the rainbow, than he had made, and broken, in his whole life before. Ere he could accost Helen, however, assistance arrived from an unexpected quarter. Picard, who was just as sure to be at the Opera as any one of the fiddles in the orchestra, recognised his fellow-travellers from Windsor with a profound and enthusiastic bow, followed by a smiling approach, in which his teeth, his whiskers, his grin, and his stealthy yet confident demeanour, proclaimed the "tiger" of social life, not wanting in some of the attributes belonging to his nobler namesake, the terror of the jungle. In another stride he would have offered his arm to Helen, but Mrs. Lascelles, warned by Sir Henry's eye, interposed, and seeing no other way of saving her charge, with a devotion almost maternal, cast off from Goldthred and seized it herself. "Take care of Helen!" she whispered in the latter's ear, while the flowers in her wreath brushed his very cheek. "This man mustn't take her--you understand! Come to-morrow to luncheon." The whisper and its purport made him quite happy; Mrs. Lascelles had also the satisfaction of observing something like displeasure cloud Sir Henry's eyes as they rested on herself and her _impromptu_ cavalier. "If he's cross it shows he _cares_," was her first thought. "Ah! he'll never care like the _other one_,"--her second, and that which remained longest in her mind.