marry far
more brilliantly, she believed as fully in the honest warm kindliness of
Fred Ryley as in that of Ethel. 'And what else matters after all?' she
tried to think.... Her reverie shifted to Rose, unfortunate Rose, victim
of peculiar ambitions, of a weak digestion, and of a harsh temperament
that repelled the sympathy it craved but was too proud to invite. She
felt that she ought to go upstairs and talk to the prostrate Rose in the
curt matter-of-fact tone that Rose ostensibly preferred, but she did not
wish to talk to Rose. 'Ah well!' she reflected finally with an inward
sigh, as though to whisper the last word and free herself of this
preoccupation, 'they will all be as old as me one day.'

'Mr. Twemlow,' said the parlourmaid.

Milly deliberately lengthened a high full note and then stopped and
turned towards the door.

'Bravo!' Arthur Twemlow answered at once the challenge of her whole
figure; but he seemed to ignore the fact that he had caused an
interruption, and there was something in his voice that piqued the
cantatrice, something that sent her back to the days of short frocks.
She glanced nervously aside at Harry, who had struck a few notes and
then dropped his hands from the keyboard. Twemlow's demeanour towards
the blushing Ethel when Leonora brought her forward was much more
decorous and simple. As for Harry, to whom his arrival was a surprise,
at first rather annoying, Twemlow treated the young buck as one man of
the world should treat another, and Harry's private verdict upon him was
extremely favourable. Nevertheless Leonora noticed that the three young
ones seemed now to shrink into themselves, to become passive instead of
active, and by a common instinct to assume the character of mere
spectators.

'May I choose this place?' said Twemlow, and sat down by Leonora in the
other corner of the Chesterfield and looked round. She could see that he
was admiring the spacious room and herself in her beautiful afternoon
dress, and the pensive and the sprightly comeliness of her daughters.
His wandering eyes returned to hers, and their appreciation pleased her
and increased her charm.

'I am expecting my husband every minute,' she said.

'Papa's gone out for a walk with Bran,' Milly added.

'Oh! Bran!' He repeated the word in a voice that humorously appealed for
further elucidation, and both Ethel and Harry laughed.

'The St. Bernard, you know,' Milly explained, annoyed.

'I wouldn't be surprised if