The evenings were already growing long, and early that night the curtains were drawn close around the little grey house, and the lamps lighted. Wythie and Basil came down early, to find Bruce already there. The two brothers, very like in features and colouring, though differing in expression, and almost the same height, stood beside the fire, looking happy and handsome in their white linen--they were the sort of men to whom evening-dress is vastly becoming. Each thought regretfully of Bartlemy far away, who had missed his prize out of the treasures the little grey house had to give. But it was good that the Commodore had arrived that day, and good to see the beaming satisfaction with which he regarded his two splendid sons, for whom no father could wish a better fate than to have won the two elder Grey daughters. Wythie and Rob had lain down for a little talk, in the old fashion, on the bed they had shared from childhood. The little talk lengthened out into a longer one than they realized; Mrs. Grey startled them by warning them that it lacked but fifteen minutes to eight o'clock, and that Rob would surely be late. Wythie helped her to dress in a hurry, just as Rob had always dressed. It was very like old times. Rob could not realize that this was Mrs. Rutherford, not Wythie Grey, helping her, and that her own days of girlhood were numbered. Frances and Lester came, and Mrs. Baldwin and her husband, to the sound of whose voice Rob's heart went out as she heard it, for he had been her father's chum, and she longed for her "Patergrey's" blessing that night. Hester, Cousin Peace, little Polly, Myrtle, good old Dr. Fairbairn--the sisters recognized these as the knocker repeatedly sounded and the guests came in. "Only Bartlemy and Prue lacking! If only Prudy could have been as comfortable and conformable as we, Wythie!" said Rob as Wythie dropped over her beautiful hair the white skirt which she was so late in donning. "It will be all right as it is, Rob dear. We won't regret anything to-night," said Wythie. "But it would have been lovely to have been the three Mrs. Rutherfords!" "Well, we each could have been only one of them," said Rob. "Just hook my collar for me, Wythiekins, and then run down, for it makes me seem much later when I keep you up here, too." Wythie did as she was asked, altered a pin in her sister's hair, laid against its unruly beauty the ferns and buds which Bruce had brought her, fell back to look at the effect, and found it so satisfactory that she seized Rob in an ecstatic embrace and then flew down-stairs, remembering for the first time that this had been intended to be her triumph through Basil's genius, and that nobody thought of the novel now.