class="narrative">Celia gasped.

“Winifred,” she exclaimed, “that is going too far. Whatever he is not, he is certainly not a mean hypocrite. You can’t think that for—for any selfish or interested motives, he would pretend to care for you? He couldn’t.”

“No, no, I don’t think him the least of a hypocrite,” said Winifred, eagerly. “You don’t understand, Celia. He thinks he does, quite honestly. He’s always been put in the position—not told he must care for me, for, of course, with a man of any spirit or principle that would only drive him the other way. And Lennox has plenty of principle and spirit too, of a kind. But he has been tacitly told he does, and so he has come to believe it.”

Celia looked extremely perplexed. This was a new light indeed upon the subject, but a light which seemed, at first at any rate, only to increase the already existing perplexity.

“If—if you think that,” she said at last, “I don’t wonder at what you always say about him. I mean about it all. Not that I don’t sympathise with you—I do, as you know. I couldn’t imagine being in love with Lennox;” and she smiled to herself, as it were, at the very thought. “But I always thought it must make a great difference if a girl knows a man is very devoted to her, you know.”

“Oh,” said Winifred, in her very off-hand way, “as far as that goes, I think I could stand Lennox better if I knew he did not care much for me,” which paradoxical speech gave her younger sister considerable food for reflection. And before Celia spoke again, Winifred dismissed the subject in her high-handed fashion, quite ignoring the fact that it was she herself, and she alone, who had started the conversation.

“You really must not chatter or let me chatter any more, Celia,” she said. “I must get my letter written.”

And for the best part of an hour there was no sound to be heard but the scratching of their pens—of Winifred’s pen alone after a while, for Celia’s correspondence was confined to her sister Louise, while Miss Maryon, once she had got her hand in, so to say, went on writing long after her rather short and not very graphic letter to her mother was finished. For she was a young woman of great energy and almost perfect physical condition. It was quite true, as she had declared to Mrs Balderson, that she was not “the very least tired.”

She looked up suddenly, when she had closed and addressed her fourth envelope.

“It must be getting rather late,” she said.

“Shall I ring for our letters to be taken down, do you think, Celia? They are not in time for to-night’s mail, but still, if posted now, they will get to Barleyfield for the afternoon delivery to-morrow.”

But to her question there came no reply, and looking up, the silence was quickly explained to her. Celia was fast asleep! Her pretty head supported by her arm, which had found a resting-place on the end of a sofa standing by, she was far away in some happy dreamland probably, to judge by the half-smile upon her face, and the calm, childlike softness of her breathing.

“Poor little Celia,” said Winifred to herself. “How sweet she looks!” and with deft and gentle hand she moved the couch, so that the fair head itself could lean on the cushion. “Let me see,” she went on, glancing at the clock on the mantel-piece, “a quarter—no, five minutes to seven. I will run down with the letters so as not to wake her by ringing, and then I will let her sleep till a quarter past. She will be all the brighter for it afterwards.”

Bright, and better than bright—each charming in her own way—looked the two girls an hour later when they entered the drawing-room again, where their hostess and her husband, a thin, elderly man, with pleasant, luminous blue eyes, and grey hair rapidly turning to white, were having a consultation after the orthodox conjugal fashion as to “who takes whom” down to dinner.

“At my left, you say, my dear? Young Mrs Fancourt at my left?—oh yes, Lennox Maryon takes her. Why, I thought—” Mr Balderson was saying, when the opening of the door made him stop abruptly, looking after the manner of men decidedly guilty, as an admonitory “sh” from his wife warned him that the new-comers were his young guests.

“That’s right,” said Mrs Balderson, heartily. “Good girls. I like to have my home party about me on these little occasions. What can that lazy Eric be doing? He is not generally so late.”

The delinquent entered as she spoke—before, indeed, the door had closed behind the two sisters. He came quietly into the room with some little laughing rejoinder to his mother, and walked over to where Mr Balderson was standing, without seeming to notice either Winifred or Celia in any special way. Yet Celia was perfectly aware that even as he passed them he took in every detail of their appearance and attire.

“I hope he thinks we are nicely dressed,” she thought, though she would not have liked Winifred to read her unspoken reflection. “I suspect he is rather critical, though in a nice way. Well, Winifred looks very pretty, I am sure, but I wish she were not quite so fond of black.”

Yes, Winifred looked very well indeed, for, though her black dress was almost severely simple, it was of rich material and fitted well. This was in accordance with Miss Maryon’s principles. She would have scorned to spend much time or thought upon her clothes, still shabbiness or dowdiness or eccentricity she did not consider a fitting accompaniment of woman as she should be. The worst that could be said of her way of dressing was that it was far too old, and on the whole monotonous. But to strangers this latter defect was naturally absent, and perhaps the very heaviness and stiffness of style she affected had practically the opposite result of making the girl herself look all the younger.

However that may have been, she was genuinely indifferent about herself; to-night her thoughts were more on dress than usual, nevertheless, for she was exceedingly interested in Celia’s appearance, and, considering her theories, almost inconsistently eager that she should be admired.

“Does she not look lovely?” she could not help whispering to Mrs Balderson, and her whole face sparkled with pleasure when there came the hearty reply.

“Most lovely; that pale pink suits her to perfection, and—” But the rest of the kind woman’s admiration remained unexpressed, for at that moment some of her guests were announced, and she had to hasten forward to meet them. Others followed quickly, causing a little bustle in the room, under cover of which a young man made his way in quietly; not sorry to do so, if the truth were told, for Mr Lennox Maryon, very much at home in the hunting-field or at a steeplechase, was decidedly shy in a London drawing-room. Nor was the consciousness of his cousin Winifred’s observant, albeit short-sighted, brown eyes, likely to put him more at his ease.

He was in luck, however, on the present occasion. Both Winifred, and Celia were for the moment somewhat apart from the Baldersons and their other guests, feeling, perhaps, as perfect strangers to the latter, just a little “out of it.” Lennox hurried up to them with great satisfaction, though not without a touch of the nervousness which somehow always hovered about him when near Winifred.

“How are you?” he said with somewhat unnecessary emphasis, considering there was not the slightest need for anxiety as to the state of health of