His meeting with Joy surprised whilst it satisfied them both. They looked into each other’s eyes for an instant, and to them both the whole world became crystal. The “whole world” to them both--their world--the only world that was to them at that moment, that ever could be, that had been since the ordination of things. This is the true heart’s-content. It is the rapture of hearts, the communion of souls. Passion may later burn the rapture into fixed belief, as the furnace fixes the painted design on the potter’s clay; but in that first moment of eyes looking into answering eyes is the dawn of love--the coming together of those twin halves of a perfect soul which was at once the conception and realisation of Platonic belief. At dinner Athlyne was placed between Mrs. Ogilvie and Joy, Colonel Ogilvie being next his daughter and Miss Hayes next her sister. Thus Aunt Judy, being opposite both her niece and the guest, could watch them both without seeming to stare. In the early part of the dinner she was abnormally, for her, silent; but later on, when she felt that things were going dully with some of the party, she manifested her usual buoyancy of spirits. She had in the meantime come to certain conclusions of her own. Somehow there was an air of constraint over all the party, but in different ways and from different causes. Athlyne was ill at ease because they all made so much of him; and as he was painfully conscious of his false position in accepting the hospitality of such persons under an alias, their kindness only emphasised to him his own chagrin. Colonel Ogilvie conscious, rather by instinct than from any definite word or action, that his guest was more reticent than he would have thought a young man would be under the circumstances, was rather inclined to resent it. The Ogilvies had from the earliest times been very important people in their own place; and many generations of them had grown up to the understanding that their friendship, even their acquaintance, was an honour. Now when he had asked into his family circle a young man known personally to him only by his visiting card and by the fact that he had saved his daughter’s life--very gallantly it was true--he found his friendly interest in his new acquaintance was not received with equal heartiness. The truth was that Athlyne was afraid. He felt instinctively that he was not his own master whilst those great grey eyes were upon him--most certainly not when he was looking into the mystery of their depths. And so he feared lest he should become confused and weave himself into a further tangle of falseness. In the background of his own mind he knew what he wished--what he intended; that this beautiful grey-eyed girl should become his wife. He knew that he must first get clear of his false position; and he was determined at any cost not to let anything interfere with this. At first Colonel Ogilvie’s allusions to his home and his place in the world were purely kindly; he thought it only