At that Esther came forth quickly enough, a blue jacket fastened over the calico lining, and her cheeks aglow with blushes, for here was a double embarrassment--to face Arthur's banter for the first time since her engagement, and to be introduced to the great Miss Rollo in a dressing-jacket! "The great Miss Rollo," however, turned out to be a simple-looking girl, who looked much more afraid of her companions than her companions were of her, while when she came face to face with Arthur he seemed suddenly sobered, and uttered his congratulations in quite a quiet, earnest voice. Was this Esther? he was asking himself--this rosy, smiling girl the sober, long-visaged Esther who had seemed so far removed from youthful romance? Love was indeed a mighty force, if it could bring about such a change as this--the right sort of love--that is to say, unselfish, ennobling, a love which has no thought for itself, but lives in the happiness of another. As Arthur looked at his old friend, and noted the softening of eye and lip, the new sweetness of expression, there rose before his imagination another face, which for many years had seemed to him the most beautiful in the world, but which now appeared suddenly hard and loveless. He never realised the fact for himself, but it was really in this moment of meeting with Esther in the flush of her happiness that the last link was snapped in the chain which had bound him to Rosalind Darcy. The dream seemed to him to have lasted quite a long time, but in reality the pause was but of a moment's duration, and had been abundantly filled by Mellicent, who having spied Arthur's parcel was consumed with curiosity to discover its contents. "What's in the box?" she cried with the directness for which she was celebrated, and Arthur picked up his parcel, and balanced it in his hands with a roguish glance in the bride's direction. "Something for Esther, for the bottom drawer." "The bottom drawer! What _are_ you talking about?" "Every engaged young woman has a bottom drawer! It's part of the performance, and you can't be properly engaged without it. It's the bottom drawer of the wardrobe generally, and all sorts of things live in it--everything and anything that she can lay hands on, to put aside for the new house. Fancy work, pictures, pottery, Christmas presents, and bazaar gleanings--in they go, and when she has friends to tea they sit in rows on the floor, and she undoes the wrapping, and they groan with envy, and cry, `How sweet! How perfectly sweet! Won't it look sweet in the drawing-room!'" "You seem to know a great deal about it!" "I do! I've heard about it scores of times, and of course I knew that Esther would have a bottom drawer like the rest." "You were mistaken then! Esther has nothing of the sort. I am to be engaged such a short time, Arthur, that I have had no leisure to think of such things. In any case, I don't think it is much in my line."