t there the bell rang, and quite suddenly she chased
away the troubled look from her eyes, leaving there the keen, kindly
gaze to which the world of London society was well accustomed. When
Jack Meredith came into the room, she rose to greet him with a smile of
welcome.

"Before I shake hands," she said, "tell me if you have been to see your
father."

"I went last night--almost straight from the station. The first person I
spoke to in London, except a cabman."

So she shook hands.

"You know," she said, without looking at him--indeed, carefully avoiding
doing so--"life is too short to quarrel with one's father. At least it
may prove too short to make it up again--that is the danger."

She sat down, with a graceful swing of her silken skirt which was
habitual with her--the remnant of a past day.

Jack Meredith winced. He had seen a difference in his father, and Lady
Cantourne was corroborating it.

"The quarrel was not mine," he said. "I admit that I ought to have known
him better. I ought to have spoken to him before asking Millicent. It
was a mistake."

Lady Cantourne looked up suddenly.

"What was a mistake?"

"Not asking his--opinion first."

She turned to the table where his letter lay, and fingered the paper
pensively.

"I thought, perhaps, that you had found that the other was a
mistake--the engagement."

"No," he answered.

Lady Cantourne's face betrayed nothing. There was no sigh, of relief or
disappointment. She merely looked at the clock.

"Millicent will be in presently," she said; "she is out riding."

She did not think it necessary to add that her niece was riding with a
very youthful officer in the Guards. Lady Cantourne never made mischief
from a sense of duty, or any mistaken motive of that sort. Some people
argue that there is very little that is worth keeping secret; to which
one may reply that there is still less worth disclosing.

They talked of other things--of his life in Africa, of his success
with the Simiacine, of which discovery the newspapers were not yet
weary--until the bell was heard in the basement, and thereafter
Millicent's voice in the hall.

Lady Cantourne rose deliberately and went downstairs to tell her niece
that he was in the drawing-room, leaving him there, waiting, alone.

Presently the door opened and Millicent hurried in. She threw her gloves
and whip--anywhere--on the floor, and ran to him.

"Oh, Jack!" she cried.

It was very prettily done. In its