Helen, having tried on her shawl and viewed herself with much complacency in all the mirrors and from every point of view, came over to where Sir Reginald was explaining a puzzle to the children, and, throwing herself into a chair opposite, said abruptly: “And what have you brought Alice?” “Alice!” he stammered, reddening even through the sunburn to the roots of his crisp dark hair. Then immediately recovering himself, replied, as he stooped to pick up a piece of the puzzle which had fallen on the floor: “Oh, nothing.” “Has he not brought her _himself_ and his V.C.?” said Mark, giving him a tremendous slap on the back. “What more could she desire?” “I am not so humble as to consider myself _nothing_, whatever you may think of me, Mark,” he returned, without raising his eyes from the puzzle, which he had just completed in the neatest manner; and, holding it out on the palm of his hand, he said: “Now, Hilda, if you put this together before dinner this evening I’ll give you the biggest box of chocolate you ever saw. I’m off to the club now,” he added, standing up and preparing to depart, cleverly eluding the fire of cross questions with which Helen was preparing to attack him. For several days he evaded all her attempts to inveigle him into a _tête-à-tête_; his engagements were so numerous that he was seldom at home, for all his old friends flocked round him, and he was the hero of the hour. Dozens of invitations came daily pouring in, and he seemed to be fairly launched in London society, and carried away by its current. Helen, like the hen whose duckling had taken to the water, looked on in impotent despair. The highest in the land, the beauties of the season, were all equally ready to engage his time. As she saw him in the Row, the centre of a circle of former brother-officers, then beckoned to the carriage of one of the belles of the season, who engaged him in most animated and _empressé_ conversation, she said to herself: “This will never do; has he forgotten that he has a home and a wife, or does he mean to ignore both completely?” She sought in vain for opportunities to sound him on the subject; he never was with her alone. All her little hints about Alice, all her endeavours to bring her name into conversation, were completely fruitless; he exhibited a skill in avoiding this one particular theme, a dexterity that irritated and amazed her. At length, after he had been nearly a fortnight in London, Helen made up her mind to stand this state of affairs no longer. Accordingly, the evening when he was dining at the Guards’ Club, she waited up for him in her boudoir. Hearing him leisurely ascending the stairs between one and two o’clock, she went out into the corridor and beckoned him into her room, saying: “Come in here, Regy; I want to speak to you.” Strangling a yawn, and laying down his candlestick, he flung himself into the nearest arm-chair with a mock tragic gesture, and said: “Say on.”