“The dear boy stood there, all flushed and excited, with his hair pushed back off his forehead and began the most extraordinary speech I've ever heard. I can't possibly give you the effect of it at secondhand, in the mere repetition of it there was little more than that he was wildly, madly happy, that there was no one in the world as happy as he, that now at last the gods had given him all that he had ever wanted, let them now do their worst--and so crying, flung his glass over his shoulder, and smashed it on to the wall behind him. “I cannot possibly tell you how sinister, how ominous the whole thing suddenly was. It swooped down upon all of us like a black cloud. Credit me, if you will, with a highly--strung bundle of nerves (not so solid matter-of-fact as I seem, _you_ know well enough) but it seemed to me, at that moment, that Peter was defying, consciously, with his heart in his mouth, a world of devils and that he was cognisant of all of them. The thing was conscious--that was the awful thing about it, I could swear that he was seeing far beyond all of us, that he was hurling his happiness at something that he had there before him as clearly as I have you before me now. It was defiance and I believe the minute after uttering it he would have liked to have rushed upstairs to see that his baby was safe.... “Be that as it may, we all felt it--every one of us. The party was clouded. Cards and Clare did their best to brighten things up again, and Peter and Tony and Janet Gale played silly games and made a great deal of noise--but the spirit was gone. “I left very early. Miss Monogue came away at the same time. She spoke to me before she said good-night: 'I know that you are an old friend of Peter's. I am so fond of him--we all are at Brockett's, it isn't often that we see him--I know that you will be his true friend in every sense of the word--and help him--as he ought to be helped. It is so little that I can do....' “Her voice was sad. I am afraid she suffers a great deal. She is evidently greatly attached to Peter--I liked her. “Well, you in your sober way will say that this is all a great deal of nonsense. Why shouldn't Peter, if he wishes, say that he is happy? All I can say is that if you yourself had been there....” CHAPTER VIII BLINDS DOWN I It was not until Stephen Westcott had rejoiced in the glories (so novel and so thrilling) of his first birthday and “The Stone House” had been six months before the public eye that the effect of this second book could be properly estimated. Second books are the most surely foredoomed creatures in all creation and there are many excellent reasons for this. They will assuredly disappoint the expectations of those who enjoyed the first work, and the author will, in all probability, have been tempted by his earlier success to try his wings further than they are, as yet, able to carry him.