"Oh! I don't count. I'm a sort of changeling." He brought his face suddenly close to hers. "I say," he said confidentially, "look after Prue a bit, and help her to a spree occasionally. It's been dull enough for her at home. She ought to have a fling now and again." Mrs Henry looked into his earnest eyes reflectively for a moment, and smiled. "That will be all right," she said. "I've been a rebel always. We'll contrive between us to make things hum. You shall come along some day and see." "I can't understand a man wishing to marry a girl who has shown that she isn't keen," he remarked. Mrs Henry betrayed amusement. "The average man's vanity prevents him from realising her lack of eagerness," she returned cynically. "He attributes her reluctance to shyness or ignorance or any other incomprehensible feminine quality, seldom to non-appreciation of himself. It is just as well, perhaps; it makes things pleasanter. But don't you think at this stage it would be advisable to admit the keenness?" "Well, perhaps," he allowed, and smiled in response to the laugh in her eyes. "Life is all a game of make-believe, after all. Look round, and behold! Every one affecting affability, and trying to appear as though this were a joyful occasion. There is as much real joy in a funeral. Uncle William is genuinely pleased anyhow. He has always feared that Prue would get Benjamin's share of the spoil. There is more than a touch of the miser in the Graynor blood." William meanwhile was conversing amiably with the bride, who, wearied with congratulations, had drawn a little apart from the press of guests, and stood in the opening of the French window where the sunlight fell on the sheen of white satin and brightened the gold of her hair. From where she stood she could survey the wallflowers growing in the borders near the path. The sight of them brought back vividly the memory of the night when they had suffered sadly from the tread of despoiling feet. She answered William absently. "I am proud of you," he said unexpectedly, and placed a heavy hand upon her arm. "The Graynor honour is safe in your keeping." She looked at him curiously. William was fond of talking of the Graynor honour as though it were a quality peculiarly and finely personal. She wondered what he had ever done to make it so manifestly his. He spoke as a man might speak, but never does, who spends his life in defence of this particular virtue. "I've renounced the Graynor," she replied with a little twist of her lips. "I'm not keeping anything appertaining to the name. As for honour, we guard it best, perhaps, when we are least concerned about it--it's a natural instinct, not an hereditary quality." "It has always been an attribute of our family," he observed pompously. "Like the chimneys," she remarked--"which spoil the landscape for other people."