tyrannous, overwhelming, came the certainty of old acquaintance. Before, however, he could start a conversation, dinner was announced, and Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright began to marshal her guests in procession. Gundred hailed the release with joy, and passed out with gentle majesty at the head of the cortège. What, then, was her indignation when, having settled herself at her host’s right, delicately removed her gloves, unfolded her napkin, untied the little bundle of pastry faggots that lay before her knotted up with blue ribbon, she turned towards her other neighbour, and discovered that he was no other than the strange, beautiful young man for whom she had conceived so unusually sudden a dislike. She hated strong emotions, and very rarely indulged them, but this one was beyond her control--a matter of instinct. In the first flash of revelation, she felt convinced that this beautiful boy was a corrupter of youth, a contemner of religion, everything that was bad and horrible; she plumed herself immediately on the nice discernment that enabled a Christian woman to divine such things, and made a virtue of the hostility she harboured. Talk to such a creature she would not. She turned quickly upon her host, and initiated the usual introductory conversation on the beauty of the table decorations. The dinner-table was of a piece with the rest of the restored house. It was so aggressively old as to be obviously new. It was of that ancient oak which is for ever modern; and, in deference to primitive simplicity, it wore no cloth. Glass and silver gleamed down its long narrow stretch, and in the middle ranged a hedge of roses and orchids embowered in ferns. Electric light was not permitted to mar its harmony with any suggestion of modernity. Candles in plain old silver candlesticks illuminated the table and its guests, shedding a soft and discreet glamour of pink from beneath their shades of crimson paper. Gundred commented amiably on the beautiful effect attained. Mr. Hoope-Arkwright, who left such details to his wife and the decorators, made what reply he could, and the conversation flowed placidly along the lines that Gundred loved, developing in the way that showed her social aptitudes at their best. ‘My wife says that electric light does not do for a dinner-table,’ explained Mr. Hoope-Arkwright. ‘Too harsh a light it sheds, she tells me. I don’t understand such things myself, but everyone says the candles and their pink shades are very becoming.’ ‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Gundred; ‘one always likes a soft gentle light. And so clever of dear Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright not to have a tablecloth. All the glass and silver shows up so well. Such wonderful taste she has.’ ‘Well, I always like a tablecloth myself, you know--seems cleaner, somehow; but Maggie says it is not the thing in a house like this.’