The evening was full of tantalised and suppressed expectation, yet of a moment’s pleasure now and then. Except the German librarian and the man from the clubs, and a young author who had been the fashion and was the _protégé_ of one of the great families visiting at Billings, the company was all much more splendid than Winton. Names that were known to history buzzed about him as he sat down to dinner, with Lady Adela Grandmaison beside him, who was exceedingly relieved to fall to his lot and not to one of the elderly noblemen who illustrated the table. Lady Adela wore a _sacque_ like a dainty lady of the eighteenth century, but was apt to throw herself into attitudes which were suggestive of the fourteenth. She did not feel at all disposed to be disdainful of Winton. Instead of this she took him into her confidence. “Did you ever see such a party of swells?” she said, notwithstanding her medieval attitudes. “Don’t they frighten you to death, Mr Winton? I am so glad to have somebody I dare talk to. The Duke is too funny for anything, don’t you think so? like an old monarch in the pantomime. It is all exactly like the theatre. He says ‘My lord’--listen! exactly as they do on the stage.” “I suppose they did that sort of thing when his Grace was young,” said Winton, looking up the great table to where that majestic presence showed beyond the ranks of his guests. A little tremor ran over him when he realised the splendour of the personage to whom he was going so soon to carry his suit. “Perhaps we are a little too free-and-easy nowadays,” he said. “Don’t desert your generation,” cried Lady Adela; and then she added significantly, “there is Jane looking our way. Jane is so sweet--don’t you think so, Mr Winton?” Winton met the soft eyes of his love and the keen ones of this young observer at the same moment; and this, though he was a man of the world, brought a sudden flush to his face. All the fine company, and the gorgeous table, heavy with plate and brilliant with flowers, grew like a mist to him, and nothing seemed real except that softly tinted, tender-shining countenance, turning upon him the light of her eyes. They were so placed that though they never spoke they could see each other across the table, through a little thicket of feathery ferns and flowers. Lady Jane was too courteous, too self-forgetting to neglect her special companion or to abandon the duty of entertaining her parent’s guests. But now and then she would lift her eyes and empty out her heart in one look across the table through that flowery veil. He was not nearly so entertaining in consequence as Lady Adela had hoped.