“Miss Bawn, you look as if you’d just come out of heaven,” Nora said fervently, as she watched me drawing on my lace mittens.

“I don’t feel like it, Nora,” I replied, “nor as if I were going there either.”

At the last moment something of my grandmother’s could not be found, so that we were delayed and arrived at Damerstown on the stroke of eight.

My neighbour at the dinner-table told me afterwards that Mr. Dawson had fidgeted over our late arrival.  I thought I could see it in the look of relief with which he came to meet us, and the evident flurry of poor Mrs. Dawson, who was looking fatter than ever in a very tight-fitting, plum-coloured satin, and hotter than ever, despite the incessant waving of her fan.

The long, splendid drawing-room was full of very gaily-dressed ladies, much bejewelled, and many men whose looks did not prepossess me.  When I had sat down, under cover of my grandmother, in a chair a little retired behind hers, I looked about me with some dread, and I was glad to recognize the friendly face of Sir Arthur Ardaragh, who came up to us with a cordial greeting.  He did not look at all at home among the Dawsons’ friends, and I wondered how Lady Ardaragh had persuaded him to come.

For a moment I did not see Lady Ardaragh anywhere, but presently her uplifted voice told me where she was, and looking down I caught a glimpse of her pretty shoulders showing rosily out of a pale green frock.  She was talking to some one; I could not see who it was for the moment.

I had not yet seen Richard Dawson; and as my eye went from one to the other of the gentlemen without seeing him, I began to be almost hopeful that he was not there.

Sir Arthur Ardaragh was talking to my grandmother and to Mrs. Dawson, who plainly was too much absorbed by the anxieties of the occasion to hear much of what he was saying.  She kept looking with an air of trepidation at her husband who was being effusively polite to my grandfather.

There were only ourselves and the Ardaraghs present of the county-people.  The other guests were staying at Damerstown or had come from a distance; they were very fashionable, but I did not like the very low dresses and the loud talk of the ladies, nor the tired, cynical-looking men.  Every one of the men, old and young, wore the same expression.  I have seen its like since at a foreign Casino, where I watched the baccarat.

The groups broke up as dinner was announced.  Mr. Dawson gave his arm to my grandmother.  I waited, wondering who might fall to my lot.  Then from the group which had been about Lady Ardaragh’s chair came—­Richard Dawson.  He had an air as though he came but half willingly.

Mrs. Dawson, who was going in with my grandfather, turned to me in a great flurry.

“My son will have the honour to take you in, Miss Devereux,” she said.  The words sounded as though they had been learnt off by heart.