"Caroline is a fool!" she muttered to herself. "All the balls in the world won't get that girl married as she wishes. She has set her heart upon that briefless barrister. I saw it as plain as daylight last season. As to entertaining all this _cohue_ of aborigines, Caroline might spare her trouble and her money, as far as the girl is concerned." And then, coming slowly down the staircase, Lady Kynaston saw something which restored her to good temper at once. The something was her younger son. She had caught sight of him through an open doorway in the conservatory. His back was turned to her, and he was bending over a lady who was sitting down, and whose face was concealed behind him. Lady Kynaston stood still with that sudden _serrement de coeur_ which comes to us all when we see the creature we love best on earth. He did not see her, and she could not see his face, because it was turned away from her; but she knew, by his very attitude, the way he bent down over his companion, by the eager manner in which he was talking to her, and by the way in which he was evidently entirely engrossed and absorbed in what he was saying--that he was enjoying himself, and that he was happy. The mother's heart all went out towards him; the mother's eyes moistened as she looked. The couple in the conservatory were alone. A Chinese lantern, swung high up above, shed down a soft radiance upon them. Tall camellia bushes, covered with waxen blossoms and cool shiny leaves, were behind them; banks of long-fronded, feathery ferns framed them in like a picture. Maurice's handsome figure stood up tall and strong amongst the greenery; the dress of the woman he was with lay in soft diaphanous folds upon the ground beyond him. One white arm rested on her lap, one tiny foot peeped out from below the laces of her skirt. But Lady Kynaston could not see her face. "I wonder who she is," she said to herself. "It is not Helen. She has peacock's feathers on her dress--bad luck, I believe! Dear boy, he looks thoroughly happy. I will not disturb him now." And she passed on through the hall into the large drawing-room, where the dancing was going on. The first person she caught sight of there was her eldest son. He was dancing a quadrille, and his partner was a short young lady in a strawberry-coloured tulle dress, covered with trails of spinach-green fern leaves. This young person had a round, chubby face, with bright apple-hued cheeks, a dark, bullet-shaped head, and round, bead-like eyes that glanced about her rapidly like those of a frightened dickey-bird. Her dress was cut very low, and the charms she exhibited were not captivating. Her arms were very red, and her shoulders were mottled: the latter is considered to be a healthy sign in a baby, but is hardly a beautiful characteristic in a grown woman.