t if people want to know what we can do they
must come and see--they'll never find out from _me_!"

A more emphatic signal from his wife arrested Mr. Gaines as he was in
the act of leading Miss Brent away.

"Eh?--What? The Amhersts and Mrs. Ansell? You must excuse me then, I'm
afraid--but Westy shall take you. Westy, my boy, it's an ill-wind.... I
want you to show this young lady our roses." And Mr. Gaines, with
mingled reluctance and satisfaction, turned away to receive the most
important guests of the day.

It had not needed his father's summons to draw the expert Westy to Miss
Brent: he was already gravitating toward her, with the nonchalance bred
of cosmopolitan successes, but with a directness of aim due also to his
larger opportunities of comparison.

"The roses will do," he explained, as he guided her through the
increasing circle of guests about his mother; and in answer to Justine's
glance of enquiry: "To get you away, I mean. They're not much in
themselves, you know; but everything of the governor's always begins
with a capital letter."

"Oh, but these roses deserve to," Justine exclaimed, as they paused
under the evergreen archway at the farther end of the lawn.

"I don't know--not if you've been in England," Westy murmured, watching
furtively for the impression produced, on one who had presumably not, by
the great blush of colour massed against its dusky background of clipped
evergreens.

Justine smiled. "I _have_ been--but I've been in the slums since; in
horrible places that the least of those flowers would have lighted up
like a lamp."

Westy's guarded glance imprudently softened. "It's the beastliest kind
of a shame, your ever having had to do such work----"

"Oh, _had_ to?" she flashed back at him disconcertingly. "It was my
choice, you know: there was a time when I couldn't live without it.
Philanthropy is one of the subtlest forms of self-indulgence."

Westy met this with a vague laugh. If a chap who was as knowing as the
devil _did_, once in a way, indulge himself in the luxury of talking
recklessly to a girl with exceptional eyes, it was rather upsetting to
discover in those eyes no consciousness of the risk he had taken!

"But I _am_ rather tired of it now," she continued, and his look grew
guarded again. After all, they were all the same--except in that
particular matter of the eyes. At the thought, he risked another look,
hung on the sharp edge of betrayal, and was snatched back, not