“That’s it, Eve,” exclaimed Lightmark hastily.  “I’m afraid of his critical what’s-his-name.  You know he can be awfully severe sometimes, the old beggar, and I don’t want him to curl me up and annihilate me while you’re here.”

“I don’t believe he would, if it were ever so bad,” said Eve, only half satisfied.  “And it isn’t; it’s awfully good.  But it’s too dark to see anything now.”

“By Jove, so it is!  Mrs. Sylvester, I’m awfully sorry; I always like the twilight myself.  Rainham, would you mind ringing the bell.  Thanks.  Oh, don’t apologize; the handle always comes off.  I never use it myself, except when I have visitors.  I go and shout in the passage; but Mrs. Grumbit objects to being shouted for when there are visitors on the premises.  Great hand at etiquette, Mrs. Grumbit is.”

The lady in question arrived at this juncture, fortified by a new and imposing cap, and laden with candles and a tea-tray, which she deposited, with much clatter of teaspoons, on a table by Mrs. Sylvester’s side.

“Thank you, Mrs. Grumbit.  And now will you come to a poor bachelor’s assistance, and pour out tea, Mrs. Sylvester?  And I’m very sorry, but I haven’t got any sugar-tongs.  I generally borrow Copal’s, but the beggar’s gone out and locked his door.  You ladies will have to imagine you’re at Oxford.”

Mrs. Sylvester looked bewildered, and paused with one hand on the Satsuma teapot.

“Don’t you know, mamma, it isn’t—­form, don’t you say? to have sugar-tongs at Oxford?  It was one of the things Charles always objected to.  I believe he tried to introduce them, but people always threw them out of the window. I think they’re an absurd invention.”

Rainham, as he watched her slender fingers with their dimpled knuckles, daintily selecting the most eligible lumps out of the cracked blue-and-white china teacup which did service for a sugar-basin, unhesitatingly agreed with her; though Mrs. Sylvester seemed to think her argument that sugar-tongs could be so pretty—­“Queen Anne, you know”—­entirely unanswerable.

It was not until Mrs. Grumbit broke in upon the cosy little party to announce that the ladies’ carriage was at the door that Rainham remembered the real object of his expedition.

Then, when Eve, warmly wrapped in her furs, and with the glow of the firelight still in her face, held out a small gloved hand with a smiling “Au revoir, Philip,” he shook his head rather sadly.

“I’m afraid it must be good-bye—­for some time, at least.  I came to tell you that I am on the wing again.  Doctor’s orders, you know.  I shall be in Bordighera on Friday, I expect.”

“And to-day’s Tuesday,” complained Eve.

“And I was just going to ask you to dine with us, one day soon,” expostulated her mother.

“You must come over at Christmas, old man,” said Dick cheerfully.  “For the wedding, you know.  You’ve got to give me away, and be bridesmaid, and all that sort of thing.”