"I am sure your father would have no objection whatever to your making friends with Lord Ashiel," Mr. Findlay assured her. "He is one of the most respectable, the most domesticated of peers. Not very cheerful company, perhaps, but no one in the world can justly say a word against him in any way. He has had a sad time lately; his wife and only child died within a month of each other, only two or three years ago. They had been married quite a short time. Since then, his sister, Mrs. Haviland, keeps house for him; but he does not entertain much, I am told, except during the autumn in Scotland. You need have no hesitation in accepting this invitation, Miss Byrne. I am a married man, and the father of a family, and I should only be too delighted if one of my daughters had such an opportunity." "Well," said Juliet, "I think I will risk it, and go. I am old enough to take care of myself, in any case." This she said haughtily, with her nose in the air. And then, with a sudden drop to her usual manner, she exclaimed in a tone of gaiety, "What fun it will be!" "I am sure you will not regret your decision," repeated Mr. Findlay, as she got up to go. "You won't forget to let Lord Ashiel know, will you?" "No, I will telephone to him at once. But I will telegraph home too, of course." Excitement over this new plan had almost dispelled the earlier disappointment, and if Juliet's spirits, as she drove back to Jermyn Street, were not quite as overflowingly high as when she had started out, they were good enough to make her smile to herself and to every one she met during the rest of the day, and to hum gay little tunes when no one was near, and altogether to feel very happy and pleased and possessed by the conviction that something delightful was about to happen. She sent off her telegram to Sir Arthur, spending some time over it, and spoiling a dozen telegraph forms, before she could find satisfactory words in which to convey her plans with an appearance of deference to authority. Then she called up the Carlton Hotel on the telephone, and was much put out when she heard that Lord Ashiel was not staying there, or even expected. It was the hall porter of her hotel who came to the rescue, by suggesting that she should try the Carlton Club, of which she had never before heard. From the quickness with which Lord Ashiel answered her, he might have been sitting waiting at the end of the wire, and he expressed great pleasure at her acceptance of his invitation. Indeed, she could hear from the tone of his voice that his gratification was no mere empty form. It was arranged that she should travel down on the following night, Lord Ashiel promising to engage a sleeping berth for her on the eight o'clock train. He himself was going North that same evening. He had just been writing a letter to Sir Arthur Byrne, he told her. He hoped she had some thick dresses with her; she would want them in Scotland.