Only Mrs. Mulholland sat watchful, her face turned towards the open door. It wore an expression which was partly excitement, partly doubt. The strings of her large mushroom hat were untied; and her ample skirts, looped up to keep them from the mud, billowed round her. Her snow-white hair, above her very black eyes, and her frowning, intent look, gave her the air of an old Sibyl watching at the cave’s mouth. But when she saw the two—the young man and the girl—coming towards her, hand in hand, she first peered at them intently, and then, as she rose, all the gravity of her face broke up in laughter. ‘Hope for the best, you foolish old woman!’ she said to herself—‘“Male and female made He them!”—world without end—Amen!’ ‘Well?’ She moved towards them, as they entered the room; holding out her hands with a merry, significant gesture. Otto and Sorell turned. Connie—crimson—threw herself on Mrs. Mulholland’s neck and kissed her. Falloden stood behind her, thinking of a number of things to say, and unable to say any of them. The last soft notes of the Prelude ceased. It was for Connie to save the situation. With a gentle, gliding step, she went across to Otto, who had gone very white again. ‘Dear Otto, you told me I should marry Douglas, and I’m going to. That’s one to you. But I won’t marry him—and he agrees—unless you’ll promise to come to Algiers with us, three weeks from now. You’ll lend him to us, won’t you?’—she turned pleadingly to Sorell—‘we’ll take such care of him. Douglas—you may be surprised!—is going to read law at Biskra!’ Otto sank into a chair. The radiance had gone. He looked very frail and ghostly. But he took Connie’s outstretched hand. ‘I wish you joy,’ he said, stumbling painfully over the words. ‘I do wish you joy!—with all my heart.’ Falloden approached him. Otto looked up wistfully. Their eyes met, and for a moment the two men were conscious only of each other. Mrs. Mulholland moved away, smiling, but with a sob in her throat. ‘It’s like all life,’ she thought—‘love and death, side by side.’ And she remembered that comparison by a son of Oxford, of each moment, as it passes, to a watershed—‘whence equally the seas of life and death are fed.’ But Connie was determined to carry things off with a laugh. She sat down beside Otto, looking business-like. ‘Douglas and I’—the name came out quite pat—‘have been discussing how long it really takes to get married.’ Mrs. Mulholland laughed. ‘Mrs. Hooper has been enjoying Alice’s trousseau so much, you needn’t expect she’ll let you get through yours in a hurry.’ ‘It’s going to be _my_ trousseau, not Aunt Ellen’s,’ said Connie with decision. ‘Let me see. It’s now the 18th of December. Didn’t we say the 12th of January?’ She looked lightly at Falloden. ‘Somewhere near it,’ said Falloden, his smile at last answering hers.