"True; but it would never do for me to give up one of my times. If I seemed to slacken, every one else would." "What will you do when the Session begins?" "I shall make some arrangement. I do not think Anne could ever take my place; she would have no authority." Anne herself here entered, took her knitting, and sat down, apparently unaware of the little pluming gesture by which Cecil unconsciously demanded attention to her bridal satin. One white- gloved gentleman after another dropped in, but none presumed on a remark; Jenkins announced the carriages; but Rosamond had not appeared, and after an excursion up-stairs, Julius returned, declaring that the first carriage must not wait for her, they would come afterwards in the van, for there was something amiss in the dress, she had not had it on since the wedding. "And she came in so late," said Cecil. "That was my fault," he said. "We came through the village to leave a message at the doctor's;" and he then insisted that the other pair should set off, taking Frank and Charlie, and prevent dinner from being kept waiting; at which the boys made faces, and declared that it was a dodge of his to join Jenny's party in the schoolroom, instead of the solemn dinner; but they were obliged to submit; and it was not till twenty minutes later, that in glided something white, with blue cashmere and swan's-down over it, moving, as usual, with languid grace. "Poor Julius!" smiled Rosamond with her dawdling dignity. "Every single thing turned out a misfit! As it is, there's a monstrous hole in my glove, which demands the benevolent fiction of my having torn it by the way. There, one second for the effect!--Good-bye, dear Mrs. Poynsett;--good-bye, Anne. Come, you monument of patience and resignation!" For one moment she had slipped back her little mantle, then drawn it on, as, taking her husband's arm, she left the room; but that moment had set Anne's cheeks aflame, and left Mrs. Poynsett in a startled state of uncertainty, hoping her glance had been mistaken, wondering what could have been _more_ amiss, and feeling incapable of entering on the subject with that severe young judge, of narrow experience. Never had her eldest son failed to come and bid her good night on his way to his own room: it was the great break in her long sleepless hours, and she used to call it a reversal of the relations of those days when he used to watch for her kiss on her way to bed. Nor did he fail her now, but came and stood over her with his fragmentary tidings. "An immense party--oh yes, there was he persuading them not to wait. Mr. Bowater took Rosamond in to dinner, Cecil went with Sir Harry Vivian. Yes, Lady Tyrrell was there, wonderfully handsome, but her expression strikes me as altered; there is the sort of pathetic look that, as Cecil said, is like the melancholy Medusa--I wonder if it is genuine. She seems greatly disposed to cultivate Cecil--I wonder what she does it for."