“Of course they’ll ask her, Mummy!” cried Ruth who, with Rosemary, had sat transfixed with indignation while the invitation was thus discussed. “And it makes no difference if they don’t. Who are the Hambles, anyway! What does Alix care about them? She doesn’t know them and doesn’t want to. I’ve seen your Lady Mary’s picture in the ‘Daily Mirror’—drooping around with bare shoulders and a plume and pretending not to know she’s being snapped. I hate such empty-headed creatures, and Alix would be bored stiff by them. Of course she can’t go! Of course she must be here for our dance!” Alix was quite sure that she would not be bored by Lady Mary; but she was also sure that she could not go. No one at Heathside would appreciate the white taffeta as Lady Mary would. There would be no one at the Heathside dance she would like as much, she felt sure of it, as those young people at Cresswell Abbey—no one, that is, except Giles; and he, as his mother had said, truly she felt sure, did not count at dances; but all the same she could not go, and Ruth and Rosemary might think, if they pleased, that it was for their reasons. She did not tell Giles in her next letter about the visit to Cresswell Abbey; but when he came home, Ruth told him, the first thing, at tea-time, all assembled as they were in the drawing-room, Toppie and herself in their accustomed places on the sofa beside Mrs. Bradley, and Ruth sitting on the arm of her brother’s chair. “Only think of it, Giles! Mummy actually thought she ought to go, because Cresswell Abbey is such a lovely place! The day of our dance, mind you! Toppie’s cousins here and all!” Giles seemed taken aback. “The week-end? She’d have been going to-day,” he said. “And missed your coming home, Giles! As if she _could_!” cried Rosemary. “And Amy expecting her puppies any day now,” said Jack. “I thought they’d have come this morning. She’d want to see them as soon as they were born, wouldn’t you, Alix?—only we must be very careful not to look at them too often. Amy’s awfully nervous when she has her pups.” “Mummy,” said Giles, eyeing his contented sisters, “you ought to have made her go. Alix is over here to see England, all she can of it. And she really doesn’t see so very much of it with us, you know.” “I did my best, dear,” said Mrs. Bradley, pouring out her tea. “She quite refused. And Toppie aided and abetted her.” “Yes. I aided and abetted her, Giles,” said Toppie, and she smiled now at him with more sweetness than Alix had ever yet seen on her face for Giles. “She can go another time to Lady Mary’s.” “Oh, one never knows about that,” Giles murmured. But now he was thinking more about Toppie’s smile than about Alix’s frustrated visit. “Didn’t you want to go to Cresswell Abbey?” he asked Alix next morning in the study, and with the question the time of their separation collapsed and, his eyes on hers, she felt him near and familiar once more, concerned, as always, for her welfare.