Her eyes were a little wistful. She stood up, a graceful girlish figure in blue velvet, with the light falling softly on the gold of her hair. Edward Morgan's gaze followed her movements, as she walked to the fireplace and stood leaning with her arm on the mantelshelf, looking down on the hearth. This free and frequent mixing with young life of the male sex disturbed him. He was jealous. It seemed to him that this new stream of sturdy youthful masculinity flowed between them, and set them still further apart. If his love for Prudence had diminished, his sense of proprietorship had not abated in the least. His pride of ownership was in arms against this incursion of new interests, new friendships, in which he had no share. "Rose is giving another dance to-morrow night, isn't she?" he said. "I think I'll go with you and look on for a bit." She lifted her head and glanced towards him, surprised, and not particularly overwhelmed with gladness at the prospect of his company. Her reception of his proposal was not exactly flattering. "You! You will be--bored. It's just a romp." "Henry will be there, I suppose?" "Oh, Henry! He likes that sort of thing. He romps too." "Henry was always a fool," Mrs Morgan put in acidly. "He would not have married Rose if he had possessed ordinary common sense. It will be as well for you to go, Edward; it may lend a little dignity to the occasion." Prudence laughed. "Oh! there's plenty of dignity--of a joyous nature," she said. "We don't rag." She crossed to old Mrs Morgan's side and laid a hand on the back of her chair, feeling remorseful, as she so often felt when she had been provoked into a show of ungraciousness. "You come too," she said softly,--"just for an hour, and look on. You'd love it; and they would love to see you there. It's you, and others like you, that every mother's son of them is out to fight for. Come and show them you appreciate their sacrifice." "I can better show my appreciation," Mrs Morgan answered, "by praying for them on my knees every night and morning of my life." She handed her empty tumbler to her daughter-in-law, and stood up. "It is time I went to bed," she said. "I find these talks very upsetting." "I'm sorry," Prudence said, and suffered the distant good-night kiss, which was the customary parting between them, regardless of any feeling of antagonism that lay behind the caress. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE. Having announced his intention of accompanying his wife to the dance which Mrs Henry was giving, Edward Morgan, despite a growing disinclination for spending an evening in this way, adhered to his purpose in much the same spirit in which a man will keep an appointment he has made with his dentist, not compulsorily, nor because he wants to, but because he has no definite reason to urge against keeping the engagement.