Matcham, which gave itself the airs common to all village communities, pretended to make very light of Mrs. Mornington's dance; a summer dance, when everybody worth meeting was, or ought to be, in London. Happily for Mrs. Mornington, the inhabitants of Matcham were a stay-at-home race--who had neither money nor enterprise for much gadding. To go to Swanage or Budleigh Salterton for a month or so while the leaves were falling was the boldest flight that Matcham people cared about. There was always so much to do at home--golf, tennis, shooting, hunting, falconry, fishing for the enthusiasts of rod and line, and one's garden and stable all the year round, needing the eye of master and mistress. Except for the absence of the great shipbuilder's family, at Hillerby Height, three miles on the other side of Salisbury, the circle of Matcham society was complete, and the answers to Mrs. Mornington's cards were all acceptances. Allan went cheerfully enough to the party, but he did not go very early, and he had something of the feeling which most young men entertain, or affect, about dances, the feeling that he was sacrificing himself at the shrine of friendship. He danced well, and he did not dislike dancing--liked it, indeed, when blest with a good partner; but it is not often that a young man can escape the chances of partners that are not altogether good, and Allan felt very doubtful as to the dancing capacities of Matcham. Those healthy, out-of-door young women, who went to about half a dozen dances in a year, would hardly waltz well enough to make waltzing anything but toil and weariness. He approached the Grove in that state of placid indifference with which a man generally goes to meet his destiny. He looks back in the after-time, and remembers that equable frame of mind, hoping nothing, expecting nothing, content with his lot in life, and in no wise eager to question or forestall fate-- "Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi, Finem di dederint." The Grove was a long, low stuccoed house, built at the beginning of the century, a house spread over a considerable extent of ground. To-night--with lights and flowers, and all the doors and windows open to the summer gloom, and lace draperies where doors had been, and white-gowned girls moving to and fro, and the sound of a Strauss waltz mixing with the voices of the idlers sitting in the hall--Mrs. Mornington's house was as pretty as a fairy palace, and as much unlike itself in its workaday guise.