Lily was vaguely disappointed.  Aunt Elinor, in soft gray silk, matronly, assured, unenthusiastically pleased to see her; Doyle himself, cheerful and suave; the neat servant; the fire lit, comfortable room,—­there was no drama in all that, no hint of mystery or tragedy.  All the hatred at home for an impulsive assault of years ago, and—­this!

“Lily, dear!” Elinor said, and kissed her.  “Why, Lily, you are a woman!”

“I am twenty, Aunt Elinor.”

“Yes, of course.  I keep forgetting.  I live so quietly here that the days go by faster than I know.”  She put Lily back in her chair, and glanced at her husband.

“Is Louis coming to dinner, Jim?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you cannot stay, Lily?”

“I ought to tell you, Aunt Elinor.  Only mother knows that I am here.”

Aunt Elinor smiled her quiet smile.

“I understand, dear.  How are they all?”

“Grandfather is very well.  Father looks tired.  There is some trouble at the mill, I think.”

Elinor glanced at Doyle, but he said nothing.

“And your mother?”

“She is well.”

Lily was commencing to have an odd conviction, which was that her Aunt Elinor was less glad to have her there than was Jim Doyle.  He seemed inclined to make up for Elinor’s lack of enthusiasm by his own.  He built up a larger fire, and moved her chair near it.

“Weather’s raw,” he said.  “Sure you are comfortable now?  And why not have dinner here?  We have an interesting man coming, and we don’t often have the chance to offer our guests a charming young lady.”

“Lily only came home yesterday, Jim,” Elinor observed.  “Her own people will want to see something of her.  Besides, they do no know she is here.”

Lily felt slightly chilled.  For years she had espoused her Aunt Elinor’s cause; in the early days she had painfully hemstitched a small handkerchief each fall and had sent it, with much secrecy, to Aunt Elinor’s varying addresses at Christmas.  She had felt a childish resentment of Elinor Doyle’s martyrdom.  And now—­

“Her father and grandfather are dining out to-night.”  Had Lily looked up she would have seen Doyle’s eyes fixed on his wife, ugly and menacing.

“Dining out?” Lily glanced at him in surprise.

“There is a dinner to-night, for the—­” He checked himself “The steel manufacturers are having a meeting,” he finished.  “I believe to discuss me, among other things.  Amazing the amount of discussion my simple opinions bring about.”

Elinor Doyle, unseen, made a little gesture of despair and surrender.

“I hope you will stay, Lily,” she said.  “You can telephone, if you like.  I don’t see you often, and there is so much I want to ask you.”

In the end Lily agreed.  She would find out from Grayson if the men were really dining out, and if they were Grayson would notify her mother that she was staying.  She did not quite know herself why she had accepted, unless it was because she was bored and restless at home.  Perhaps, too, the lure of doing a forbidden thing influenced her sub-consciously, the thought that her grandfather would detest it.  She had not forgiven him for the night before.