This letter, which had arrived that morning, had given Joan a great deal to think about. It had touched her very deeply. Until now Falk had never shown that he had thought about her at all, and now here he was depending on her and needing her help. At the same time, she had not the slightest guide as to her father's attitude. Falk's name had not been mentioned in the house during these last weeks, and, although she realised that a new relationship was springing up between herself and her father, she was still shy of him and conscious of a deep gulf between them. She had, too, her own troubles, and, try as she might to beat them under, they came up again and again, confronting her and demanding that she should answer them. Now she put the whole of that aside and concentrated on her father. Watching him during dinner, he seemed to her suddenly to have become older; there was a glow in her heart as she thought that at last he really needed her. After all, if through life she were destined to be an old maid--and that, in the tragic moment of her youth that was now upon her, seemed her inevitable destiny--here was some one for whom at last she could care. She had felt before she came down to dinner that she was old and ugly and desperately unattractive. Across the dinner-table she flung away, as she imagined for ever, all hopes for beauty and charm; she would love her father and he should love her, and every other man in the world might vanish for all that she cared. And had she only known it, she had never before looked so pretty as she did that night. This also she did not know, that her mother, catching a sudden picture of her under the candle-light, felt a deep pang of almost agonising envy. She, making her last desperate bid for love, was old and haggard; the years for her could only add to that age. Her gambler's throw was foredoomed before she had made it. After dinner, Brandon, as always, retired into the deepest chair in the drawing-room and buried himself in yesterday's _Times_. He read a little, but the words meant nothing to him. Jubilee! Jubilee! Jubilee! He was sick of the word. Surely they were overdoing it. When the great day itself came every one would be so tired.... He pushed the paper aside and picked up _Punch_. Here, again, that eternal word--"How to see the Procession. By one who has thought it out. Of course you must be out early. As the traffic...." JOKE--Jinks: Don't meet you 'ere so often as we used to, Binks, eh? Binks: Well--no. It don't run to Hopera Box _this_ Season, because, you see, we've took a Window for this 'ere Jubilee. Then, on one page, "The Walrus and the Carpenter: Jubilee Version." "In Anticipation of the Naval Review." "Two Jubilees?" On the next page an illustration of the Jubilee Walrus. On the next--"Oh, the Jubilee!" On the next, Toby M.P.'s "Essence of Parliament," with a "Reed" drawing of "A Naval Field Battery for the Jubilee."