A slight noise had caused her to turn her head. There stood her husband, holding aside the portière and gazing smilingly at her. He had gone to the boudoir first in search of her. He now came forward, and having disposed of his hat and gloves on a side table, he bent over his wife and kissed her tenderly. "My telegram reached you in due course, I see. I was afraid you would be growing uneasy." "I had indeed grown very uneasy long before it arrived." "I had gone for a longer ride than usual, when all at once Selim fell lame. I was compelled to dismount and lead him at a snail's pace as far as Greystone Priors, where I had his legs bandaged, and have left him till tomorrow." Then, having drawn up a chair, he asked, but without any apparent eagerness: "Anything fresh? Any news?" "None whatever." "Then Rodd has not returned?"--consulting his watch as he put the question. "I have not seen anything of him. But the trial will scarcely be over as early as this, will it?" "That is more than I can say." Thrusting his hands into his pockets, and whistling under his breath a lively operatic air, he strolled to the garden window and stood gazing out for a little while. His wife followed him with her eyes. Now that his back was towards her, her face had grown suddenly aged and anxious looking. "He is playing a part, and he thinks I cannot see through the pretense," she whispered to herself. "But love has keen eyes. What it is that he is hiding from me I cannot so much as guess, but sure I am that some secret trouble is gnawing at his heartstrings." Presently Drelincourt turned from the window, and going to the piano, he sat down on the music stool and began to play a bar of the air he had been whistling. Suddenly Marian appeared at the window, and seeing her father in the room, she laid a finger on her lips as a caution to her mother. Then she ran lightly across the floor, and next moment her arms were round his neck and her lips pressed to his cheek. "You were gone this morning before I was down, so that I have not been able to thank you till now for your beautiful, beautiful present." "Nor I an opportunity of wishing my little girl--ought I not rather to say my bouncing big girl?--many, very many happy returns of the day, which I now do from the bottom of my heart." His arm was round her waist, and for the next few seconds she felt herself pressed close to him. Tears sprang to her eyes. "Dear papa!" she said to herself. "He loves me more than I thought he did." At this juncture the colonel and young Deane came in by way of the farther window. "And I have had other charming gifts," resumed Marian. "One from mamma, one from Wally, another from Colonel Winslow, and yet another from Roden Marsh. Am I not a fortunate girl? You must come and see them where they are laid out in mamma's dressing room." A little later in the afternoon Drelincourt and Walter Deane happened to be left alone in the morning room.