Doreen, whose cheeks were much flushed and whose eyes were unusually bright, was extremely gracious.  She offered to take Mr. Lindsay into the grounds to interview the gardener, so that they might come to an understanding about the evergreens to be used.  She glanced at Dudley as she made this proposal.  He glanced back at her; and in his black eyes she fancied for a moment that she saw a mute protest, a plea.

For a moment she hesitated.  Standing still in the middle of the room, not far from where he was busy helping Queenie to tie up a particularly limp and fragile box of chocolates, she seemed to wait for a single word, or even for another look, to turn her from her purpose.

But Dudley turned away, and either did not see or did not choose to notice the pause.  Then the tears sprang to the girl’s eyes, and she ran quickly to the door.

“Come, Mr. Lindsay,” said she, “we must make haste.  At this stage of things, every minute has to be weighed out like gold, I assure you.”

She went quickly out into the large hall, and the curate followed with alacrity.  Max and his mother were engaged in a wrangle over some soup and coal tickets which somebody had mislaid, and in the search for which the whole room, with its parcels and bundles, had to be overturned.

Queenie, who was at work at the end of the room, near the window, uttered a short laugh.  Dudley, who was standing a little way off, drew nearer, and asked what she was laughing at.

“Oh, that misguided youth who has just gone out!”

“Misguided?”

“Yes,” said Queenie, shortly.  “If he hadn’t been misguided, he would have devoted his attention to me, not to Doreen.  By all the laws of society, curates’ wives should be plain.  They should also be simple in their dress, and devoted to good works.  Doreen says so herself.  Why, then, didn’t he see that I was the wife for him and not the beauty?”

“Don’t you think she will have him, then?” asked Dudley, very stiffly, after a short pause.  “She seems to like him.  There was no need, surely, for her to have been in such a hurry to take him into the grounds, if she had felt no particular pleasure in his society.”

Queenie looked up rather slyly out of her little light eyes.  She was distressed on account of her sister’s trouble about this apparently vacillating lover, and irritated herself by his strange conduct.  But at the bottom of her heart she believed in him and in his affection for Doreen, just as her sister herself did, and she would have given the world to make things right between two people whom she chose to believe intended by nature for each other.

“I think there are other people in the world whose society Doreen likes better,” she said at last, below her breath.

The wrangle at the other end of the room was still going on, and nobody heard her but Dudley.  He flushed slightly and looked as if he understood.  But he instantly turned the talk to another subject.