To-night her face showed that anxious thoughts were crowding in on her as she apprehensively watched the big, carved oak door leading into the hall. Jim knew his aunt’s firmness of character, and as silence followed his words, he feared further discussion was useless; but the wistful faces of the children at tea-time in the nursery, as they coaxed him to plead for them to see the fun, made him venture a final appeal. "You know, Aunt, Sir Charles brought Di over to stay with Mabel so that she might see the festivities and incidentally say good-bye to me, so you might turn angel and let Diana dance once with me at the very beginning of the ball. I sha’n’t see my little playfellow for ages, you know." A sound from outside held Lady Elizabeth’s attention more intently than Jim’s pleading words. He crossed to her in the window-enclosure and laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder. "The Colonel wired me that we were leaving Paddington at nine to-morrow morning, and India is a long way off, Auntie mine." "Nonsense," answered Lady Elizabeth, as she rose from the deep window-seat. "You are almost twenty, and Diana is only a babe—isn’t she, Henry?" She glanced up and appealed to the young man who rather noisily entered the library. "Who’s a babe? Diana? Why, mater, she’s a little witch, and I promised her I’d let her see the illuminations at ten and then old Burrow should carry her off to bed." Henry Wynnegate, seventh Earl of Kerhill, dropped into a great settle close to the fire. The ball was for the tenantry in celebration of his return, after five years’ absence with his regiment. He was a tall, heavy-set young soldier of seven-and-twenty, with the famous Wynnegate beauty, but it was marred by the shifting expression of his rather deep-set eyes and the heavy lines about his mouth. Self was his god: it showed in every expression of his face and in every action of his life. Jim Wynnegate, his cousin, the son of the younger brother of the late Earl, Henry’s father, turned from the window as Henry entered. In the young boy’s face—for he seemed younger than his years—one could easily trace the family resemblance; but Jim, with his great, clean spirit shining in his honest gray eyes, invited confidence and won it, from a mongrel dog to a superior officer. He was taller than Henry, and as slim as a young sapling. The delicate, sensitive mouth was balanced by a strong chin.