val tradition favoured the taking of all possible
risks, and he determined to let the affair develop as rapidly as
possible.

The dulness of the rest of the party isolated them. To all intents and
purposes they were alone. The difference between this girl and all the
others that he had met was that she withheld nothing, she didn't hedge,
or try to protect herself with any assumption of feminine mystery. It
puzzled Radway. He wondered, in his innocence, if he had succeeded in
making a swift, bewildering conquest. Of course he hadn't done
anything of the sort, but the speculation disarmed him, and by the end
of the evening he was thoroughly bowled over.

So was Sir Jocelyn--but in another way. All the time that she had been
talking to Radway Gabrielle had kept her eye on him. She knew that
things were reaching a point of danger when she saw his eyes fill with
tears as he told the sympathetic Lady Halberton of the loss of his
wife. The achievement of sentiment in Jocelyn marked a fairly high
degree of intoxication. In the middle of her description of the
Roscarna black-game shooting Gabrielle stopped dead. Radway wondered
what on earth had happened to her.

It was a difficult moment, for she hadn't the least idea of its
conventional solution. She only knew that somehow she must rescue her
father before he became impossible. She supposed that, in the ordinary
way, it was his duty and not hers to bring the visit to an end, but she
knew that as long as there was whiskey in the decanter he wouldn't
dream of going. So she left Radway in the middle of her sentence,
walked straight up to Lady Halberton and said, "Good-night," with a
staggering abruptness, and before he knew what had happened Lord
Halberton was handing Jocelyn his hat.

It took Radway more than a minute to recover from this cold douche; but
he was too far gone to let the possibility of romantic developments
slip, and before the Hewishes left, he contrived to let Gabrielle know
that he wanted to meet her again. "Outside the gates of Trinity
College to-morrow at four o'clock," he whispered. She said nothing.
He wondered, for one moment, whether she was deeper than he had
imagined. Then she looked him full in the eyes and nodded. It gave
him a thrill of delight. He found himself listening in a dream to Lady
Halberton's reminiscences of the Admiral's garden party, at which they
had met, and a maternal appreciation of the accomplishments of her
e