"Horrid lynx-eyed boy," she said to herself as she ran upstairs, "He's growing up far too quickly. He needs to be snubbed." She dashed to the wardrobe, pulled out the black garment, and gave it a vindictive shake. "Old, dowdy, unbecoming, deaconess-district-visitor-bible-woman, great-grand-auntly thing!" she cried. Then her eye lighted on a cherished lavender satin. She stood for a moment deliberating, the black dress over her arm, her eyes fixed upon the lavender one that hung in the wardrobe. "I don't care," she cried suddenly: "I'll wear the lavender, so here goes! Men are all colour blind, so he'll merely notice that I look nice. I must conceal from myself and everybody else how depressed I am over the interview with Nurse, and how I dread discussing the cottage with Aunt de Tracy. That must be done the first thing after dinner, or I shall lose what little courage I have." Lavendar thought he had never seen her look so lovely as when he met her in the drawing room a quarter of an hour later. There was nothing extraordinary about the dress but its exquisite tint and the sheen of the soft satin. The suggestion that lay in the colour was entirely lost upon him, however: if asked to name it he would doubtless have said "purplish." How he wished that he might have escorted her into the dining room, but Mrs. de Tracy was his portion as usual, and Robinette was waiting for Carnaby, who seemed unaccountably slow. "Your arm, Middy, when you are quite ready," she said to him at last. Carnaby's extraordinary unreadiness seemed to arise from his trying to smuggle some object up his sleeve. This proved, a few moments later, to be a bundle of lavender sticks tied with violet ribbon that he had discovered in his bureau drawer. He laid it by Robinette's plate with a whispered "My compliments." "What does your cousin want that bunch of lavender for, at the table?" Mrs. de Tracy enquired. "She likes lavender anywhere, ma'am," Carnaby said with a wink on the side not visible by his grandmother. "It's a favourite of hers." Robinette could only be thankful that Lavendar was occupied in a _sotto voce_ discussion of wine with Bates, and she was able to conceal the bundle of herbs before his eyes met hers, for the fury she felt against her precious young kinsman at that moment she could have expressed only by blows. Dinner seemed interminably long. Robinette, for more reasons than one, was preoccupied; Lavendar made few remarks, and Carnaby was possessed by a spirit of perfectly fiendish mischief, saying and doing everything that could most exasperate his grandmother, put her guests to the blush, and shock Miss Smeardon. But at last Mrs. de Tracy rose from the table, and the ladies followed her from the room, leaving Lavendar to cope alone with Carnaby. "My fair American cousin is more than usually lovely to-night, eh, Mr. Lavendar?" the boy said, with his laughable assumption of a man of the world.