"She is a year older than I, and I am twenty-four," Mr Winchester replied, simply. "I am fourteen years younger than my brother. Why, he is _almost_ old enough to be your father." "Nonsense!" said the girl, sharply. "I am eighteen--eighteen past; that only makes--" She stopped and looked confused. "Twenty years," said Robin, calmly. "Practically a generation. Still, as Wordsworth says--what is it he says about `a pair of friends?' One was--I forget how old or how young, but Matthew was seventy-two, I'm sure." "I don't know," Imogen replied. "I don't know Wordsworth well, except `We are Seven,' and I can't bear it. I had to learn it when _I_ was seven, and I always thought her such a stupid little girl. After all," she went on, "twenty years don't seem so much. When Major Winchester is seventy-two I shall be fifty-two, and I'm _sure_ once a woman is fifty-two she might as well be a hundred." "Perhaps you won't think so when the time comes," said Robin. "Shall we take one other turn, Miss Wentworth? We shall not have time for more." The music stopped before they had got well round the room. Then Imogen, espying her mother in a corner not far from where Florence and her partner were standing, made Mr Winchester pilot her thither. But she did not volunteer to introduce him, though he lingered in the neighbourhood for a moment or two. "The mother is a sweet-looking woman," he thought. For he had noticed the adoring smile with which the girl was greeted. "But she never can have been as charming as the girl. _She_ has much more character, I should say, than her mother. But she is very, very young. I wonder if--I hope;" then his thoughts became less defined, as he went off in another direction to claim the dance which Alicia, his eldest cousin, had promised. Still they had brought a somewhat anxious expression to his usually unclouded face, and more than once during his waltz with her, Miss Helmont reproached him with being nearly as solemn and "absent" as Rex himself. And there was some reason for her remarks. Robin's misgivings intensified, as the first turn round the room brought into full view his late partner, glancing up in his brother's face with what looked to him like not-to-be-concealed delight, as Major Winchester appeared to claim the dance he had been somewhat tardy of remembering. "She has forgiven him already," thought the younger man. "_I_ never saw that look in her face all the time she was dancing with me," and he gave a little sigh. "Rex should be--" "Robin, what _is_ the matter? Are you in love? You are sighing `like a furnace,' or an old man with asthma?" said Alicia. And the young man had to smile and excuse himself. His interpretation of Imogen's face was not quite correct, but it would have required much deeper discernment than his--than Imogen's own indeed--to eliminate the elements of gratified vanity and girlish triumph from the nobler feelings with which they were intermingled.