The girl who was advancing across the grass was small and slight, with large gray eyes set wide apart, and a mass of fair hair which the slanting rays of the sun behind her turned into a bright golden mist about her head. She was something more than pretty; for mere prettiness always implies a certain insipidity, and there was certainly no trace of that in Barbara Shannon’s face. On the contrary, the firm lines of her chin alone, to take only one of her small features, showed a strength of character unusual in a girl of her age; one hardly looks for that sort of thing at feminine nineteen or thereabouts. Alec caught his breath as he hurried towards her. It was only yesterday that she had promised to marry him, and he had not quite got accustomed to it yet. “Dearest!” he exclaimed, making as if to take her in his arms (William had long since disappeared in search of weapons with which to rout the greenfly). “Dearest, how topping of you to guess I should be waiting for you out here!” Barbara put out a small hand to detain him. Her face was very grave and there were traces of tears about her eyes. “Alec,” she said in a low voice, “I’ve got rather bad news for you. Something very dreadful has happened—something that I can’t possibly tell you about, so please don’t ask me, dear; it would only make me more unhappy still. But I can’t be engaged to you any longer. You must just forget that yesterday ever happened at all. It’s out of the question now. Alec I—I can’t marry you.” Chapter II An Interrupted Breakfast Mr. Victor Stanworth, the host of the little party now in progress at Layton Court, was, according to the reports of his friends, who were many and various, a thoroughly excellent sort of person. What his enemies thought about him—that is, provided that he had any—is not recorded. On the face of it, at any rate, however, the existence of the latter may be doubted. Genial old gentlemen of sixty or so, somewhat more than comfortably well off, who keep an excellent cellar and equally excellent cigars and entertain with a large-hearted good humour amounting almost to open-handedness, are not the sort of people to have enemies. And all that Mr. Victor Stanworth was; that, and, perhaps, a trifle more.