"No; and I'd rather not, thank you. But it's the hair which has changed you more than the clothes. I can't think how it's done. I wonder----" Dorothy stopped; the other finished the sentence for her. "If I will do yours for you? Come into the house, and then I'll show you. I've discovered I've quite a genius for dressing hair. I'll make a perfect picture of you--you won't know yourself when I've finished. Which room have you got? You don't know? You think that's the window? That's the pink room--we call it the pink room because once upon a time its decorations were pink; and we still call it the pink room, though now they're what I call a symphony in chaste French-grey. Talk about this frock! You wait till you see me this afternoon! I say, you were lucky to drop on us on our day of days! There'll be tons of people here; and, among them, one or two nice ones. Honestly, did you know what day it was?" "Of course I didn't; and, if you don't mind, I'd--I'd just as soon stay in the house while all those people are here. I--I don't feel in a mood for that kind of thing." "What kind of thing? Stuff! You don't know what you're talking about; shyness is what's the matter with you; and that's a complaint of which little convent-bred girls have got to be cured. Wait till I've tried my hand upon your hair! Come along, I'll start on it at once. Why," she had taken Dorothy's hand in her own, "I say!--whatever's this?--a ring!--on her engagement finger!--diamonds!--and such a beauty! Dorothy, what is the matter with the child? She's staring at her own finger as if she were staring at a ghost!" Dorothy was staring at Mr Emmett's ring, which gleamed at her on the third finger of her left hand. Until that moment she had been unconscious of its presence--a fact which was a sufficient commentary on her mental state during the last several hours. She could not think how it had got there; to her it was something worse than a ghost; it brought back to her, on the instant, all that she would have been so willing to forget. CHAPTER XIV STRATHMOIRA Mr Vernon found Mrs Vernon in the morning-room, engaged with what seemed to be household accounts. As is apt to be the case when people have been married to each other for more years than they sometimes care to remember, morning greetings were with them a minus quantity. He began without any preface: "Everything all right for this afternoon?" She looked up from a bill. "Yes, I think so; as far as I know." She looked back at the bill. "I am confident Barnes has made a mistake, he is always doing it." She looked up again, turning half round in her chair. "But, Harold, have you seen her?"