measure in the glories and splendours of this great family.

Then, with a little sigh of satisfied approval, she softly walked away
again.

II

Two hours later Rachel Beaminster, standing a little behind her aunt,
saw the people pressing up the stairs. To those who watched her, she
seemed perfectly composed, her flushed cheeks, her white dress, her dark
hair and eyes gave her distinction against the colour and movement of
the room.

Her eyes were a little stern, and her body was held proudly, but her
hands moved with sharp spasmodic movements against her dress.

As she stood there men were brought up to her in constant succession and
introduced. They wrote their names on her programme, bowed and went
away. She smiled at each one of them. Before dinner she had been
introduced to the Prince--German, fat and cheerful--and the second dance
of the evening was to be with him. Some of the men who had been dining
in the house she already knew--Lord Crewner, Roddy Seddon, Lord
Massiter, and others--and once or twice now the faces that were led up
to her were familiar to her.

The great ballroom seemed to be already filled with people, and still
they came pressing up the stairs.

Rachel was miserably unhappy. For one moment before she had left her
room, where her maid had stood admiringly beside her, when she herself
had seen the reflection of the white dress and the dark hair and the
flushed cheeks in the long mirror, for one great moment she had been
filled with exaltation. This ball, this agitation, this excitement was
all for her. The world was at her feet. The locked doors were at last
rolling open before her and all life was to be revealed.

Pearls that Uncle John had given her were her only ornament. They
laughed at her from the mirror, laughed and promised her success,
conquest, glory. Life at that instant was very precious.

But, alas! the dinner had been a terrible failure. She had sat between
Lord Crewner and Lord Massiter, and had no word to say to either of
them. Lord Massiter was middle-aged and hearty and kind, and he had done
his best for her, but she had been paralysed. They had talked to her
about the opera, the theatres, hunting, books, Munich; she had had a
great deal to say about all these things, and she had said nothing.
Always within her there seemed to be rivalry between the Beaminster
way of saying things and the other way. When Lord Crewner said to her,
"What I like in music is a real cheer