Mrs. Blencarrow had never looked better in her life. She wore a new gray velvet dress, long and sweeping, without any of the furbelows of the time, which would not have suited the heavy material nor her own admirable figure. It was open a little at the throat, with beautiful lace surrounding the fine warm whiteness. Her hair was worn higher than was usual at the time, in a fashion of her own, and fastened with diamond stars. The children were very proud of their mother. She was like a lady out of a book, said Emmy, who was a romantic girl. Reginald felt himself more grand than words can say when he stood up beside her at the door to receive the guests. Her eyes were something like her diamonds--full of light; and she met every glance more proudly than ever, with that direct look which some people thought so candid and open, and Mrs. Bircham believed to be a defiance to all the world to find out something that was not right. There was nothing, certainly, to find out in that open house, where every stranger might penetrate into every corner and welcome. Mrs. Blencarrow was a little pale, but now and then her countenance would be covered by one of those sudden flushes of emotion which made her radiant. She put one hand on Reginald’s shoulder with a proud gesture, as though he were supporting her as she stood at the door welcoming everybody; and the boy drew himself up to his fullest height, trying to look twenty. He shook hands with everyone in the most anxious, hospitable way. Never was the part of master of the house more thoroughly played; and thus, with every expectation of pleasure, the ball began. CHAPTER II. ‘IS IT YOU?’ Kitty Bircham had been a flirt almost from the time she could speak; but even to a flirt Fate sometimes comes in the midst of her frivolity, as well as to the simplest girl. She had played with so many hearts without being the worse for it, that it was the greatest surprise to herself, as well as to her mother and interested friends, to find that at last this little witch was herself caught. I need not say that the man was the last person whom, in her sober senses, Kitty would have chosen, or any of her family consented to. Man! He was not even a man, but a boy--only two or three years older than herself--a young fellow who had to go through one of those ordeals, quite new-fangled then--things which nobody understood--an examination for an appointment; and who had nothing in the world but the prospect of that, a prospect daily becoming less probable since he and she had fallen in love with each other. They were neither of them of that high strain which is stimulated by love. They had not force of mind to think that every day which was spent in love-making, quarrelling and folly made it less easy for Walter Lawrence to work the next, or to work at all; and that without work he was as little likely to pass his examination as to fly; and that if he did not pass that examination they could not marry.