On the evening of the same day Archie Rowland knocked at Eddy’s door. It had been an evening of the lively order, which had now become habitual at Rosmore. Eddy and Marion had carried all before them. After a long discussion of the details of the ball, the decorations in which Eddy was collaborating with Mrs. Rowland, and fertile in a thousand suggestions, Rosamond had again struck up a waltz on the piano, and the two gayest members of the party had immediately started off. There were present some of Miss Eliza’s many nieces and nephews from the Burn, and in a few minutes two or three couples had “taken the floor,” winding in and out of the furniture, with difficulties which increased the mirth. Mr. Rowland himself had come in from the dining-room while this lively scene was going on, and had looked upon it benignantly for a minute or two in the doorway, but had ended by going away, amused but perhaps a little bored by this unreasoning invasion of his quiet, as the father of a family not unfrequently does, not displeased that his children should enjoy themselves, but with an odd sense of bachelorhood and detachment as he takes refuge in his library, supposing him to have one. Evelyn had been looking on too, still more benignant, glad that the youthful members of the party should be occupied anyhow, ready to take her place at the piano, and help them to keep it up, yet a little disturbed by the withdrawal of her husband, and instantly conscious, sympathetically, that the too-prominent and continual amusement of the young people had its disadvantageous side. Probably had she been their mother, she would have taken their part more warmly, and with a vague blame in her mind of the man who could not blot himself out as she did, for what pleased the children. Archie, to whom this evening, in the greater number of performers, Rosamond could not offer herself as a partner, felt like his father, a little annoyed and very much amazed with himself for feeling annoyed. How much better, he said to himself, to be like Saumarez, able to give himself up to what other people wished, to amuse them, and make the evening “go off” for the guests. Archie felt that he himself would never be up to that. He would never be able to forget himself and throw off all his cares, and sacrifice himself on the altar of his guests. A secret longing forced itself upon him to get rid of them all, to be quiet, even as in the dull evenings before the arrival of the visitors. The evenings had been very dull, but still--. As for the old life in Glasgow, Archie somehow did not go back to that--it had retired so very far away out of his ken. If it had been thirty years ago instead of four months it could not have become more completely impossible, a thing got into the abyss of the past, not to be thought of any more.