“Disgrace?”

“Oh, never mind, Ted!  If it isn’t true, if I’ve been dreaming....”

Instead of a woman stunned by a life sentence of poverty, he saw his wife rejoicing as if she had heard good news.

Their minds were held for a minute by the sound of some one knocking at the house door; one of the girls opened the door, there was a brief hubbub in the passage and then they heard a cry of “Eleanor!” through the folding doors.

“There’s Eleanor,” he said, realizing he had told his wife nothing of the encounter in Hyde Park.

They heard Eleanor’s clear voice:  “Where’s Mummy?  Or Daddy?” and then:  “Can’t stay now, dears.  Where’s Mummy or Daddy?”

“I ought to have told you,” said Scrope quickly.  “I met Eleanor in the Park.  By accident.  She’s come up unexpectedly.  To meet a boy going to the front.  Quite a nice boy.  Son of Riverton the doctor.  The parting had made them understand one another.  It’s all right, Ella.  It’s a little irregular, but I’d stake my life on the boy.  She’s very lucky.”

Eleanor appeared through the folding doors.  She came to business at once.

“I promised you I’d come back to supper here, Daddy,” she said.  “But I don’t want to have supper here.  I want to stay out late.”

She saw her mother look perplexed.  “Hasn’t Daddy told you?”

“But where is young Riverton?”

“He’s outside.”

Eleanor became aware of a broad chink in the folding doors that was making the dining-room an auditorium for their dialogue.  She shut them deftly.

“I have told Mummy,” Scrope explained.  “Bring him in to supper.  We ought to see him.”

Eleanor hesitated.  She indicated her sisters beyond the folding doors.  “They’ll all be watching us, Mummy,” she said.  “We’d be uncomfortable.  And besides—­”

“But you can’t go out and dine with him alone!”

“Oh, Mummy!  It’s our only chance.”

“Customs are changing,” said Scrope.

“But can they?” asked Lady Ella.

“I don’t see why not.”

The mother was still doubtful, but she was in no mood to cross her husband that night.  “It’s an exceptional occasion,” said Scrope, and Eleanor knew her point was won.  She became radiant.  “I can be late?”

Scrope handed her his latch-key without a word.

“You dear kind things,” she said, and went to the door.  Then turned and came back and kissed her father.  Then she kissed her mother.  “It is so kind of you,” she said, and was gone.  They listened to her passage through a storm of questions in the dining-room.

“Three months ago that would have shocked me,” said Lady Ella.

“You haven’t seen the boy,” said Scrope.

“But the appearances!”

“Aren’t we rather breaking with appearances?” he said.