Mrs. Dudgeon departed with appropriate graciousness. The irrepressible gaiety of the company round her had merely served to make her more unapproachable. She greeted Adelaide Maud with a stare, and strove to make her immediate adieus. Mr. Maclean, always ready to notice a deficiency, remembered that Mr. Leighton had never met Adelaide Maud, and forthwith introduced her. Adelaide Maud took this introduction shyly, and Mr. Leighton was charmed with her. With an unfaltering estimate of character he appraised her then as being one in a hundred amongst girls. Adelaide Maud, on her part, showed him gentle little asides to her nature which one could not have believed existed. Mrs. Dudgeon grew really impatient at the constant interruptions which impeded her exit. "Mr. Leighton has just been telling me," she said by way of getting out of the drawing-room, "that a little party is to be celebrated here to-night. I fear we detain you all." Nothing could have been more gracious--and yet! Mabel flushed. It seemed so like a children’s affair--that they should be having a party, and that the really important people were actually clearing out in order to allow it to occur. Miss Steven said farewell with real regret. "I don’t know when I have had such a jolly afternoon," she said. "I think I must get knocked over oftener. Though I don’t want Mr. Leighton to break his ribs every time. Do you know," she said in a most heart-breaking manner, "I’ve been hardly able to breathe for thinking of it. You can’t think how nice it is to see you all so jolly after all." When they had got into the Dudgeons’ carriage, and were rolling swiftly homewards, she yawned a trifle. "What cures they are," she said airily. Adelaide Maud, in her silent corner of the carriage, felt her third pang of that memorable afternoon. CHAPTER VIII The Party Nobody knew how anybody got dressed for the party, and certainly nobody took any dinner to speak of. It was laid in the morning-room, and Mr. Leighton said throughout that roystering meal that never again, no matter how many ribs Cuthbert broke or how much sympathy he excited, would he allow them to have a party. The occasion became memorable, not only because of Cuthbert or the mayonnaise, or the Dudgeons, but because on that night Robin Meredith appeared. Mabel and Jean lately had already in quite a practical manner begun to wonder whom Mabel would be obliged to marry. Jean was getting very tall, and showed signs of being so near the grown-up stage herself, that she was anxious to see Mabel disposed of, so as to leave the way clear. "The eldest of four ought to look sharp," she declared; "we can’t allow any trifling." This seemed rather overwhelming treatment of Mabel, who was only seventeen. But viewed from that age, even a girl of twenty-one is sometimes voted an old maid, and Mabel was quite determined not to become an old maid.