The Park was looking its best, the fresh foliage heavy as midsummer, yet still retaining some tints of spring green in the brilliant afternoon sunshine which swept in low lines under the trees. And Duke, though he objected to the fuss, could not refrain from stopping the carriage to show the ladies the great marquee prepared for the dinner next day. The workmen were busy with it, but it was sufficiently advanced to be exhibited, and Duke could not but be a little proud of the great erection, and the way everything was being done. He dragged Lady Frogmore all over it, while Miss Hill stood with an unconcealed look of indifference, if not hostility, taking no notice of anything outside. “Old Agnes’” opposition almost reconciled Duke to the “fuss” he disliked, and cleared all his objections away. They were received by Letitia at the door which was a great mark of honor to her sister-in-law: but she too gave Agnes the slightest of welcomes, letting her hand drop as soon as she had touched it, and turning away to conduct Lady Frogmore upstairs, as if she had no other guest. The whole family, indeed, clustered about Mary, conveying her in triumph to the room where tea awaited her, and leaving Miss Hill as if she had been the maid, in the hall, to follow at her leisure. Perhaps Duke, though he supposed himself to hate Agnes, was moved by a sense at least of the rudeness of his family, for he separated himself from the little crowd and hung about as if waiting for the unwelcome visitor who was left out. “You don’t need,” he said, with an uneasy laugh, “to be shown the way?” “No,” said Agnes. “I once knew it well enough: but a visitor whom nobody wants always requires to be shown the way. Oh never mind. I don’t care. Tell me where I shall find Mar?” “He was not with the rest?” said Duke, uneasy still. “No, he was not with the rest. Do you know,” said Agnes Hill, “it would be better taste in your position not to count him up with the rest, and to call him by his proper name--Frogmore.” “He is one of the family,” said Duke, reddening. “We never think of him as anything else.” “All the same,” said Miss Hill, “though he may be one of the family, he’s not the last or the youngest, but the chief person in the house: and his proper name is Frogmore.” “I knew,” cried Duke, “as soon as I heard you were coming, that you’d try to sow discord between Mar and the rest! Not with me,” the young man added proudly. “Nobody could make Mar think that I didn’t give him his due. Thank heaven he knows me!” Agnes’ grey eyes, which were full of fire, softened in spite of her. “I couldn’t do you wrong, Duke,” she said, “though you’re too much in my boy’s place to please me. I believe you’ve always been good to him. Yes, I do: though it was a bad day for him when he was left here.” “You’ve no right to say so,” said Duke, who had been half softened too, and now flashed up again in wrath with the moisture still in his eyes.