He watched his young daughter with a mixture of aesthetic pleasure and perplexity.  Could this be good for her?  To go on dancing indefinitely with one young man could that possibly be good for her?  But they looked very happy; and there was so much in young creatures that he did not understand.  Noel, so affectionate, and dreamy, seemed sometimes possessed of a little devil.  Edward Pierson was naif; attributed those outbursts of demonic possession to the loss of her mother when she was such a mite; Gratian, but two years older, had never taken a mother’s place.  That had been left to himself, and he was more or less conscious of failure.

He sat there looking up at her with a sort of whimsical distress.  And, suddenly, in that dainty voice of hers, which seemed to spurn each word a little, she said: 

“I’m going to stop!” and, sitting down beside him, took up his hat to fan herself.

Eve struck a triumphant chord.  “Hurrah I’ve won!”

The young man muttered: 

“I say, Noel, we weren’t half done!”

“I know; but Daddy was getting bored, weren’t you, dear?  This is Cyril Morland.”

Pierson shook the young man’s hand.

“Daddy, your nose is burnt!”

“My dear; I know.”

“I can give you some white stuff for it.  You have to sleep with it on all night.  Uncle and Auntie both use it.”

“Nollie!”

“Well, Eve says so.  If you’re going to bathe, Cyril, look out for that current!”

The young man, gazing at her with undisguised adoration, muttered: 

“Rather!” and went out.

Noel’s eyes lingered after him; Eve broke a silence.

“If you’re going to have a bath before tea, Nollie, you’d better hurry up.”

“All right.  Was it jolly in the Abbey, Daddy?”

“Lovely; like a great piece of music.”

“Daddy always puts everything into music.  You ought to see it by moonlight; it’s gorgeous then.  All right, Eve; I’m coming.”  But she did not get up, and when Eve was gone, cuddled her arm through her father’s and murmured: 

“What d’you think of Cyril?”

“My dear, how can I tell?  He seems a nice-looking young man.”

“All right, Daddy; don’t strain yourself.  It’s jolly down here, isn’t it?” She got up, stretched herself a little, and moved away, looking like a very tall child, with her short hair curling in round her head.

Pierson, watching her vanish past the curtain, thought:  ’What a lovely thing she is!’ And he got up too, but instead of following, went to the piano, and began to play Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in E minor.  He had a fine touch, and played with a sort of dreamy passion.  It was his way out of perplexities, regrets, and longings; a way which never quite failed him.