Peter and Jane, meanwhile, had strolled into the picture-gallery, with its softly shaded lights and long vistas of flowering plants and palms. There was about them to-night something which seemed to set them apart. Few persons cared to disturb them, even by a greeting, as they sat side by side in the corridor or walked together down the long gallery. Jane Erskine had put off that air, which suited her so admirably, of seeming to be always under an open sky; she had left it behind with her short skirt and the motor-cap which she loved to pull down over her eyes. This evening in shimmering white satin, and with a string of pearls round her throat, she looked what she was--a very beautiful and very distinguished young woman. The tempered light of the room seemed to deepen the colour in her cheeks and to bring out the bright tints of her hair; her lips parted in a smile, and her eyes had radiance in them. She and Peter mingled with the throng of dancers again, and then, not waiting until the music had finished, they left the ballroom by the farther door where Mrs. Ogilvie was standing. Peter stopped when he saw her, and looked at her a little anxiously. 'You should not be standing, should you?' he said, in his kindly way; 'you look tired.' Mrs. Ogilvie gave one of her enigmatic smiles. 'Who would not be tired?' she said. 'Was there ever such an extraordinary way of amusing oneself as to stand in a draughty doorway in the middle of the night, shaking hands with some hundreds of people whom one doesn't want to see!' She sat down on a sofa and watched the two figures as they passed down the long corridor. The mechanical smile of welcome with which she had greeted half the county this evening had not died away from her face; she sat upright on the satin-covered sofa. There was about her an air of strength, of eminence almost, which seemed to place her genuine ugliness above criticism. Her dress was of some heavy purple stuff which few women would have had the courage to wear, and the diamonds in her hair, with their sharp points of radiating light, accentuated something that was magnificent and almost defiant about Mrs. Ogilvie to-night. Her short-sighted eyes contracted in their usual fashion as she watched the couple disappear down the vista of the corridor. 'If only it could be soon! If only their marriage could be soon!' she murmured to herself, her lips moving in an inward cry that in another woman might have been a prayer. 'How do you think she is looking?' said Peter, as, without conscious intention, he and Jane drifted away from the dancers into a more distant part of the house. 'Surely she gets tired too easily? I wish she would see a doctor; but she hates being fussed over, and one can never persuade her to take care of herself.' 'What is one to do with so wilful a woman?' said Jane.