"Rose is the fashion--a town rake. His brother must not hope to see him. Well, I cannot care to-night----" He turned into the dining-room, looking about him. The ladies followed, and there, in the strong fair light of the candles, the three cast eager eyes on each other. After the gay warmth and joy of their meeting this pause came almost like embarrassment, as if they found themselves, after all, strangers. His mother was quick to see the change in the new arrival. At first she did not think this Marius as handsome as the boy who had left her two years ago. The next second she told herself that his powdered hair, his elegant clothes, his graceful bearing, had vastly improved him, and that he was very like his father. He came round the table, took her hand and kissed it. "How beautiful you are, mother," he said. The Countess coloured. That, too, was like his father. Across this scene of the handsome room, with its pleasant appointments, with the figures of young man and woman, rose the picture of a tablet in the parish church. She felt suddenly very lonely. "Susannah will show you your room," she said faintly, "and then we will have dinner." "The same room?" smiled Marius. "Oh, yes!" nodded Susannah. "Then I can find it. I have not been away a hundred years, my lady, and I hear them with the portmantles. You must not move for me." Laughing, he left the room. They heard his greetings to the servants in the hall, and the agreeable bustle of arrival filled the quiet house. The Countess sat down at the head of the table; one of her fair hands lay among the glasses on the shining white cloth. The other drooped in her lap; she looked up at Susannah, and her eyes were wistful. "Do you think he has changed?" she asked. "Into a man--yes." Lady Lyndwood sighed. "He has the air--he was never as handsome as Rose." Miss Chressham laughed shortly. "He is handsome enough." She moved a silver bowl of roses further on to the table. "Rose, of course, is--" She suddenly broke off, and her manner had an air of distance. "You must be very proud of them, Aunt Agatha." The Countess shook her delicate head. "I feel a helpless old woman, my dear, and quite a stranger to both." The window stood open on the June evening, a most exquisite perfume lingered round the chamber, a perfume of roses, violets, and indefinable things of the night; an almost imperceptible breeze caused the candle flames to tremble against their shining silver sconces and filled the room with a sense of life and movement. In each of the glasses on the table a gem of light quivered, and the little gold labels hung round the necks of the dark wine bottles gave forth long shuddering rays. The white china was painted in pink, the hue of the half-opened moss roses; in the centre of the table two harts in ivory, each wearing a collar of turquoise, bore between their antlers a crystal dish filled with pale lilies.