Nobody in the house knew—­what, however, shrewd Queenie half guessed that Doreen had many an anxious hour, many a secret fit of crying, on account of the change in Dudley’s manner toward her.  The brilliant, proud-hearted girl was more deeply attached to him than anybody suspected.  If any remark was made by outsiders as to the comparative rarity of the young barrister’s visits during the past two months, it was always accompanied by the comment that Miss Wedmore would not be long in consoling herself.

And everybody knew that the curate, the Rev. Lisle Lindsay, was hungering to step into Dudley’s shoes.

He was not quite to be despised as a rival, this “snowy-banded, dilettant, delicate-handed priest.”  In the first place, he was a really nice, honorable young fellow, with no much worse faults than a pedantically correct pronunciation of the unaccented vowels; in the second place, he was considerably taller than the race of curates usually runs; and in the third place, he had a handsome allowance from his mother, and “expectations” on a very grand scale indeed.  Miss Wedmore, if she were to decide in his favor, might well aspire to be the wife of a bishop some day.  And what could woman wish for more?

He was no laggard in love either.  On the very morning after the arrival of Max and Dudley, Mr. Lindsay called soon after breakfast to make inquiries about the amount of holly and evergreens which would be available for the decoration of the church, and was shown into the morning-room, where most of the great work of preparation for Christmas was taking place.

Mrs. Wedmore and all the young people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called “the everlasting tree.”  The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and unnecessary length about the top.

Max was a hopeless failure as an assistant.  He was always possessed with a passionate desire to do something different from what he was asked to do; and when they gave way and indulged his fancy, the fancy disappeared, and he found that he wanted to do something else.

“It’s always the way with a man!” was Queenie’s scornful comment on her brother’s failing.

Queenie herself looked upon the whole business of the tree as a piece of useless frivolity unworthy the time and attention of grown-up people.  And she went about the share in it which she had been persuaded to undertake with a stolid and supercilious manner which went far to spoil the enjoyment of the rest.

Dudley entered, into the affair with some zest, but it was noticeable that he devoted himself to Queenie, and exchanged very few remarks with Doreen.  There was a certain barrier of constraint springing up between him and Doreen which had risen to an uncomfortable height by the time the curate entered.