That night there was to be a party at Greenhill and, as early hours were the fashion, the Harrowby carriage was to start at seven o’clock to make the five miles to Greenhill. In a little while Lyddon with Richard and Archie appeared, and they all sat round the hall fire discussing the ball of the night before. Colonel Tremaine was charmed with Angela and Archie’s delightful surprise of playing “Dixie” for the first time and insisted that Archie should take his violin to Greenhill that night and repeat the performance. Angela had a very good excuse for not appearing at supper, saying that she was obliged to dress. But this was something new on her part, because usually when Neville was at home she had to be dragged away from him in order to make her toilet if they were going to a party. Colonel Tremaine, who was an arrant sentimentalist, had noticed one or two things between Angela and Neville, and when Mrs. Tremaine was putting on her lace headdress in her bedroom, the colonel tapped at the door and asked her to step into his dressing room. Then, closing the door, he remarked: “My dearest Sophie, have you noticed anything of a suspicious nature, I mean an agreeably suspicious nature, between Angela and Neville?” Mrs. Tremaine, gorgeous in blue satin, and adding a white feather to her headdress, stopped for a moment as if she had been shot, and put her hand to her heart. No woman ever hears with composure that she has been deposed from the throne in the heart of her favorite son. She remained silent for half a minute trying to collect her wits, for no such idea as that suggested by Colonel Tremaine had ever occurred to her before. “No,” she said presently in a low voice. “I haven’t noticed anything. What have you observed, my dear?” “Oh, only trifles, but they mark the beginning of love! Who should know them better than you and I?” The delicious flattery, the distinction of being made love to by a husband after more than thirty years of married life, was not lost on Mrs. Tremaine. When Colonel Tremaine added: “Should we not wish, my dearest Sophie, that our children should have the same happy married life that we have had?” Mrs. Tremaine smiled a faint, tremulous smile, and then Colonel Tremaine added: “Is it not much better that Neville’s future wife should already be a daughter to us? We have agreed that Neville shall inherit Harrowby, and how agreeable is the thought that there will be neither break nor intrusion between the present _régime_ and those who are to inherit after us.”