But to her question there came no reply, and looking up, the silence was quickly explained to her. Celia was fast asleep! Her pretty head supported by her arm, which had found a resting-place on the end of a sofa standing by, she was far away in some happy dreamland probably, to judge by the half-smile upon her face, and the calm, childlike softness of her breathing. "Poor little Celia," said Winifred to herself. "How sweet she looks!" and with deft and gentle hand she moved the couch, so that the fair head itself could lean on the cushion. "Let me see," she went on, glancing at the clock on the mantel-piece, "a quarter--no, five minutes to seven. I will run down with the letters so as not to wake her by ringing, and then I will let her sleep till a quarter past. She will be all the brighter for it afterwards." Bright, and better than bright--each charming in her own way--looked the two girls an hour later when they entered the drawing-room again, where their hostess and her husband, a thin, elderly man, with pleasant, luminous blue eyes, and grey hair rapidly turning to white, were having a consultation after the orthodox conjugal fashion as to "who takes whom" down to dinner. "At my left, you say, my dear? Young Mrs Fancourt at my left?--oh yes, Lennox Maryon takes her. Why, I thought--" Mr Balderson was saying, when the opening of the door made him stop abruptly, looking after the manner of men decidedly guilty, as an admonitory "sh" from his wife warned him that the new-comers were his young guests. "That's right," said Mrs Balderson, heartily. "Good girls. I like to have my home party about me on these little occasions. What can that lazy Eric be doing? He is not generally so late." The delinquent entered as she spoke--before, indeed, the door had closed behind the two sisters. He came quietly into the room with some little laughing rejoinder to his mother, and walked over to where Mr Balderson was standing, without seeming to notice either Winifred or Celia in any special way. Yet Celia was perfectly aware that even as he passed them he took in every detail of their appearance and attire. "I hope he thinks we are nicely dressed," she thought, though she would not have liked Winifred to read her unspoken reflection. "I suspect he is rather critical, though in a nice way. Well, Winifred looks very pretty, I am sure, but I wish she were not quite so fond of black."