She had written her letter to Cheiron—­she knew not of such things as messenger-boys or cabs, and had got Priscilla to post it for her, and now with enforced quiet awaited his answer which she thought she could receive on the morrow.

“There has been a crisis in the Cabinet, has there not?” she said to her stepfather, hoping to hear something, and James Anderton replied that there had been some split—­but for his part, the sooner this rotten lot of sleepers had gone out the better he would be pleased; a good sound Radical he was, like his friend Mr. Hanbury-Green.

Halcyone abruptly turned the conversation.  She could not, she felt, discuss her beloved and his opinions, even casually, with this man of another class.

Oh! her poor mother—­her poor, sweet mother!  How terrible it must have been to her to be married to such a person!—­though her common sense prompted her to add he was probably, under her influence, not nearly so coarse and bluff in those days as now he appeared to be.

Her little stepbrother, James Albert, had not returned from his private school for the summer holidays, so she perhaps would not see him during her visit.

As the dinner went on everything struck her as glaring, from the footmen’s liveries to the bunches of red carnations; and the blazing electric lights confused her brain.  She, the little country mouse, accustomed only to old William’s gentle shufflings, and the two tall silver candlesticks with their one wax taper in each!

She could not eat the rich food, and if she had known it, she looked like a being from some shadowy world among the hearty crew.

Next morning Mr. Carlyon received her letter as he began his early breakfast; and he tugged at his silver beard, while his penthouse brows met.

The matter required the most careful consideration.  He enormously disliked to have to play the role of arbiter of fate, but he loved Halcyone more than anything else in the world, and felt bound to use what force he possessed to secure her happiness—­or, if that looked too difficult, which he admitted it did, he must try and save her from further unnecessary pain.

He had the day before received John Derringham’s letter written from Wendover and which Mrs. Porrit had redirected, containing the news of the intended wedding, and it had angered him greatly.

He blazed with indignation!  His peerless one to be made to take a mistress’s place when any man should be proud to make her his honored wife!  “The brutal selfishness of men,” he said to himself, not blaming John Derringham in particular.  “He ought to have gone off and left her alone when he felt he was beginning to care, if he had not pluck enough to stand the racket.  But we are all the same—­we must have what we want, and the women must pay—­confound us!”