Mrs. Comber, taking a few things off, putting a bright new dressing-gown on, and smiling from ear to ear, watched Isabel with burning eyes. “Oh! my dear!... No, just come and sit on the bed beside me and have these things off, and I've been much too busy to write about that skirt of mine that I told you I would, and there it is hanging up to shame me! Well! I'm just too glad, you dear!” Here she hugged and kissed and patted her hand. “And he is such a nice young man, although Freddie doesn't like him, you know, over the football or something, although I'm sure I never know what men's reasons are for disliking one another, and Freddie's especially; but I liked him ever since he dined here that night, although I didn't really see much of him because, you know, he played Bridge at the other table and I was much too worried!” She drew a breath, and then added quite simply, like a child, and in that way of hers that was so perfectly fascinating: “My dear, I love you, and I want you to be happy, and I think you will—and I want you to love me.” Isabel could only, for answer, fling her arms about her and hold her very tight indeed, and she felt in that little confession that there was more pathos than any one human being could realize and that life was terribly hard for some people. “Of course, it is wonderful,” she said at last, looking with her clear, beautiful eyes straight in front of her. “One never knew how wonderful until it actually came. Love is more than the finest writer has ever said and not, I suspect, quite so much as the humblest lover has ever thought it—and that's pessimistic of me, I suppose,” she added laughing; “but it only means that I'm up to all the surprises and ready for them.” “You 'll find it exactly whatever you make it,” Mrs. Comber said slowly. “I don't think the other party has really very much to do with it. You never lose what you give, my dear; but, as a matter of fact he's the very nicest and trustiest young man, and no one could ever be a brute to you, whatever kind of brutes they were to anyone else—and I wish I'd remembered about that skirt.” The silence of the room and house, the peace of the night outside, came about Isabel like a comfortable cloak, so that she believed that everything was most splendidly right. “And now, my dear,” said Mrs. Comber, “tell me what this is that I hear about your young man and Mr. Perrin, because I only heard the veriest words from Freddie, and I was just talking to Jane at the time about not breathing when she's handing round the things, because she's always doing it, and she 'll have to go if she doesn't learn.” Isabel looked grave. “It seems the silliest affair,” she said; “and yet it's a great pity, because it may make a lot of trouble, I'm afraid. But that's why we announced our engagement to-day, because it 'll be, it appears, a case of taking sides.” “It always is here,” said Mrs. Comber, “when there's the slightest opportunity of it.”