d a storm of applause broke the
silence.

Challoner rose hastily. He had just opened the door of the box to go
to Cynthia when an attendant entered. He carried a note on a tray.

"For you, sir."

Challoner took it wonderingly. It was written in pencil on a page torn
from a pocket-book.

"A lady in the stalls gave it to me, sir," the attendant explained,
vaguely apologetic.

Jimmy unfolded the little slip of paper, and read the faintly pencilled
words. "Won't you come and speak to us, or have you quite forgotten
the old days at Upton House?"

Challoner's face flashed into eager delight. What an idiot he had been
not to recognise them. How could he have ever forgotten them? Of
course, the girl in the white frock was Christine, whose mother had
given his boyhood all it had ever known of home life!

Of course, he had not seen them for years, but--dash it all! what an
ungrateful brute they must think him!

For the moment even Cynthia was forgotten in the sudden excitement of
this meeting with old friends. Challoner rushed off to the stalls.

"I knew it must be you," Christine's mother said, as Jimmy dropped into
an empty seat beside her. "Christine saw you first, but we knew you
had not the faintest notion as to who we were, although you bowed so
politely," she added laughing.

"I'm ashamed, positively ashamed," Jimmy admitted, blushing
ingenuously. "But I am delighted--simply delighted to see you and
Christine again--I suppose it is Christine," he submitted doubtfully.

The girl in the white frock smiled. "Yes, and I knew you at once," she
said.

Challoner was conscious of a faint disappointment as he looked at her.
She had been such a pretty kid. She had hardly fulfilled all the
promise she had given of being an equally pretty woman, he thought
critically, not realising that it was the vivid colouring of Cynthia
Farrow that had for the moment at least spoilt him for paler beauty.

Christine was very pale and a little nervous-looking. Her eyes--such
beautiful brown eyes they were--showed darkly against her fair skin.
Her hair was brown, too, dead brown, very straight and soft.

"By Jove! it's ripping to see you again after all this time," Jimmy
Challoner broke out again eagerly. He looked at the mother rather than
the daughter, for though he and Christine had been sweethearts for a
little while in her pinafore days, Jimmy Challoner had adored Mrs.
Wyatt right up to the time when, in his first