Rose--at last! And even Gladys' achievement thrown into the shade! Here
was compensation for all she had suffered from the girl's distracting
habit of going just so far with the wrong man as to give her
palpitations. She had felt downright nervous about Major Desmond. For
Rose never gave one her confidence. And she had suffered qualms about
this new unknown young man. But what matter now? To your right-minded
mother, all's well that ends in the Wedding March--and Debrett! Most
satisfactory to find that the father _was_ a Baronet; and Mr Sinclair
_was_ the eldest son! Could anything be more gratifying to her maternal
pride in this beautiful, difficult daughter of hers?

Consequently, when the eldest son came in to report himself, all that
inner complacency welled up and flowed over him in a volume of maternal
effusion, trying enough in any case; and to Roy intolerable, almost, in
view of that enforced reservation that might altogether change her tone.

After nearly an hour of it, he felt so battered internally that he
reached the haven of his own room feeling thoroughly out of tune with
the whole affair. Yet--there it was. And no man could lightly break with
a girl of that quality. Besides, his feeling for her--infatuation
apart--had received a distinct stimulus from their talk about his mother
and the impression made on her by the photograph he had brought with
him, as promised. And if Mrs Elton was a Brobdingnagian thorn on the
stem of his Rose, the D.C.'s patent pleasure and affectionate allusions
to the girl atoned for a good deal.

So, instead of executing a 'wobble' of the first magnitude, he proceeded
to clinch matters by writing first to his father, then to a Calcutta
firm of jewellers for a selection of rings.

But he wavered badly over facing the ordeal of wholesale
congratulations--the chaff of the men, the reiterate inanities of the
women.

On Tuesday, Rose warned him that her mother was dying to give a dinner,
to invite certain rival mothers, and announce her news with due eclat.

"Hand us round, in fact," she added serenely, "with the chocs and Elvas
plums!--No! Don't flare up!" Her fingers caressed the back of his hand.
"In mercy to you, I diplomatically sat down upon the idea, and remained
seated till it was extinct. So you're saved--by your affianced wife,
whom you don't seem in a frantic hurry to acknowledge...!"

He caught her to him, and kissed her passionately. "You _know_ it's not
that---