Peggy murmured a few non-committal words, and Rosalind floated away, restored to complacency by the contrast between the prospect of her own wedding and that of poor old Esther. They would indeed be different occasions; and so thought Peggy also, as she stood watching her friend depart, contrasting her lovely restless face with Esther's radiant calm, and the gloomy town residence of Lord Darcy with the breezy country vicarage. The next morning at breakfast Colonel Saville discussed the coming weddings from an outsider's point of view. "Two presents!" he groaned. "That's what it means to me, and pretty good ones too, I suppose, for everything has grown to such a pitch of extravagance in these days that one is expected to come down handsomely. When we were married we thought ourselves rich with twenty or thirty offerings, but now they are reckoned by hundreds, and the happy recipients have to employ detectives to guard their treasures. Esther, I suppose, will be content with a piece of silver, but we shall have to launch out for once, and give Miss Darcy something worthy of her position." "I think, dear, if we launch out at all it must be for Esther, not Rosalind. If I had my way, I should give some pretty trifle to Rosalind, who will be overdone with presents, and spend all we can spare on something really handsome for Esther," said his wife gently; and Peggy cried, "Hear! Hear!" and banged such uproarious applause with her heels that the colonel felt himself hopelessly out-voted. "If you had your way, indeed!" he grumbled, pushing his chair back from the table and preparing to leave the room. "When do you _not_ get your way, I'd like to know? It's a case of serving two masters with a vengeance, when a man has a wife and a grown-up daughter! Settle it to please yourselves, and don't take any notice of me. I'm going out shooting, and won't be home until tea-time, so you will have plenty of time to talk it over in peace and quietness!" Peggy ran after him with a little skip, slipped her hand through his arm, and rubbed her face coaxingly against the shoulder of his rough tweed suit. "He is just a down-trodden old dear, isn't he? So mild and obedient--a perfectly nonentity in his own house! No one trembles before him! He never lays down the law as if he were the Tsar of All the Russias, or twenty German Emperors rolled into one! Now does that really mean that you are to be out for lunch? I'm housekeeper, you know, and it makes a difference to my arrangement. You won't say you are going to be out, then appear suddenly at the last moment?" "Not I! I shall be miles away, and cannot spare the time to come so far; but for that matter I cannot see why it should make any difference. One person more or less can be of no importance."