ade his bed and he must lie on it. I warned him. And Jenny
sees that, too."

Archie glanced at the girl, and Dick looked hard at her, straight into
her face. But there was absolutely no sign there of any perturbation.
Certainly she looked white in the falling dusk, but her eyes were merry
and steadfast, and her voice perfectly natural.

"That's how we've settled it," she said. "And if I'm satisfied, I
imagine everyone else ought to be. And I'm going to write Frank a good
long letter all by myself. Come along, father, we must be going. Lord
Talgarth isn't well, and we mustn't keep him up."

(IV)

When the last game of billiards had been played, and whisky had been
drunk, and Archie had taken up his candle, Dick stood still, with his
own in his hand.

"Aren't you coming?" said Archie.

Dick paused.

"I think I'll smoke one more cigarette on the terrace," he said. "It's a
heavenly night, and I want to get the taste of the train out of my
mouth."

"All right, then. Lock up, will you, when you come in? I'm off."

It was, indeed, a heavenly night. Behind him as he sat at the table
where they had had coffee the great house shimmered pale in the summer
twilight, broken here by a line or two of yellow light behind shuttered
windows, here with the big oriel window of the hall, blazing with coats,
fully illuminated. (He must remember, he thought, to put out the lights
there as he went to bed.)

And about him was the great soft, sweet-smelling darkness, roofed in by
the far-off sky alight with stars; and beneath him in the valley he
could catch the glimmer of the big lake and the blotted masses of pine
and cypress black against it.

It was here, then, under these circumstances, that Dick confessed to
himself, frankly and openly for the first time, that he was in love with
Jenny Launton.

He had known her for years, off and on, and had thought of her as a
pretty girl and a pleasant companion. He had skated with her, ridden
with her, danced with her, and had only understood, with a sense of mild
shock, at the time of her engagement to Frank six months before, that
she was of an age to become a wife to someone.

That had been the beginning of a process which culminated to-night, as
he now understood perfectly. Its next step had been a vague wonder why
Archie hadn't fallen in love with her himself; and he had explained it
by saying that Archie had too great a sense of his own importance to
permit himself to marry a