to come back, but in reality he threshed about in the darkness because his cheeks had begun to burn. There was a sting for him in Mrs. Tregent's refusal, and this sting was sharper even than the disappointment of his desire. It was a reproach to his delicacy; it made him feel as if he had been an ass for the second time. When she was young and free his faith had been too poor and his perceptions too dense; he had waited to show her that he only bargained for certainties and only recognised success. He dropped into a chair at last and sat there a long time, his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, trying to cover up his humiliation, waiting for it to ebb. As the sounds of the night died away it began to come back to him that she had given him a promise to which a rich meaning could be attached. What was it that before going away she had said about Vera, in words he had been at the moment too disconcerted to take in? Little by little he reconstructed these words with comfort; finally, when after hearing a carriage stop at the door he hastily pulled himself together and went down to admit his daughter, the sight of the child on his threshold, as the brougham that had restored her drove away, brought them all back in their generosity. "Have you danced?" he asked. She hesitated. "A little, papa." He knew what that meant--she had danced once. He followed her upstairs in silence; she had not wasted her time--she had had her humiliation. Ah, clearly she was too short! Yet on the landing above, where her bedroom candle stood, she tried to be gay with him, asking him about his own party and whether the people had stayed late. "Mrs. Tregent stayed after the others. She spoke very kindly of you." The girl looked at her father with an anxiety that showed through her smile. "What did she say?" He hesitated, as Vera had done a moment before. "That you must be our compensation." His daughter's eyes, still wondering, turned away. "What did she mean?" "That it's all right, darling!" And he supplied the deficiencies of this explanation with a long kiss for good-night. The next day he went to see Mrs. Tregent, who wore the air of being glad to have something at once positive and pleasant to say. She announced immediately that Arthur was coming back. "I congratulate you." Then, as they exchanged one of their looks of unreserved recognition, Maurice added: "Now it's for Vera and me to go." "To go?" "Without more delay. It's high time we should take ourselves off." Mrs. Tregent was silent a moment. "Where shall you go?" "To our old haunts, abroad. We must see some of our old friends. We shall spend six months away." "Then what becomes of _my_ months?" "Your months?" "Those it's all arranged she's to spend at Blankley." Blankley was Mrs. Tregent's house in Derbyshire, and she laughed as she went on: "Those that I spoke of last evening. Don't look as if we had never discussed it and settled it!"