When he led her back to the ballroom and delivered her to her partner he became aware as he stood for a moment alone at the entrance to the crowded room that he still held the silken rose in his hand. He looked at it in some perplexity. Mr Musgrave was a man of tidy habits; to drop the rose upon the floor was not a tidy habit; it would, moreover, be in the way, and it would certainly get crushed. He slipped it instead into his pocket. Clearly in the circumstances that was the best thing to do with it. The present difficulty of the disposal of the rose being thus overcome, Mr Musgrave dismissed from his mind the embarrassment of its further disposal and turned his attention to the agreeable occupation of observing the graceful evolutions of the various couples on the floor; and if his eyes followed one figure more particularly, other eyes were doing the same, so that it could not be said of him that he was in any way peculiar in his preference for watching the prettiest and most graceful dancer in the room. CHAPTER TWENTY. When Peggy Annersley got out of her ball-dress in the early hours of that New Year's morning she slipped on a comfortable dressing-gown and sat down before the fire and lighted a cigarette, while she awaited the arrival of her sister, whose room adjoined hers, and who, on separating outside the bedroom door, had stated her intention of joining her to talk over the evening before going to bed. Peggy was very agreeable to talk over anything. She was not in the least sleepy, and only pleasantly tired. Excitement with her acted as a nerve-tonic, and the night had not been without its excitements. Sophy entering in a similarly comfortable deshabille, and approaching the hearth, hairbrush in hand, surprised her sister looking contemplatively into the flames and smiling at her thoughts. She was wondering--and it was this speculation which brought the smile to her lips--what John had done with her rose. She had made some search for it after he had left and had failed to discover it. It crossed her mind that perhaps John made a practice of collecting such souvenirs. "You look," said Sophy, as she stood for a moment and scrutinised the smiling face, "wicked. A lifelong acquaintance with your facial expressions leads me to conclude that you are indulging in a review of your conquests. Vanity will be your undoing, Peg o' my heart." "Sit down," said Peggy, "and have a cigarette." Sophy took a cigarette, but she did not immediately light it. She put her slippered feet on the fender and continued her study of her sister's face. Seen in the flicker of the firelight, with the brown curls falling about her shoulders, Peggy made a charming picture. She looked so surprisingly young and so full of the joy of life. But she was not young, Sophy reflected. In a few years she would be thirty, and after thirty a woman loses her youth.