The very air of Gwen’s two rooms, the bedroom and the dressing-room off it, shimmered with excitement. It glowed in the soft light of the innumerable wax candles with which Mary had studded the tables, it hung in the rose-pink curtains, it shone in the leaping blue flame of the fire, it was everywhere and most inconveniently so in the fingers of the new lady’s maid, a creature of sentiment, who was putting the finishing touches to her young mistress’s bodice, while Mary was trotting round restlessly, disturbed in every individual hair of her head, casting rapt glances at Gwen and furtive ones at the door.

At the sound of a footstep on the stairs she gave a sudden start and her face lighted, but it shaded as suddenly.

“Only Mrs. Fellowes!” she murmured, and she showed her in with some grimness.

Mrs. Fellowes stopped on the threshold and took in Gwen leisurely with a half-choked gasp of wonder, then she went over and kissed her.

“Gwen, love, you are beautiful, I never knew it before!”

Gwen looked up at her then turned to the glass and laughed. “I am,” she said, “I am beautiful and I never knew it before!”

Then she stood up and shook down the soft gleaming folds of her tulle-shrouded silk and straightened herself.

It was her first long dress, and added two inches to her height.

“Look, I am changed, I am a new creature, I am afraid of nothing! I feel like a knight-errant setting forth on his quest, his was glory, mine—” she paused.

“What’s yours?” said Mrs. Fellowes smiling on her.

“Mine? Mine’s glory too.”

She paused again, and a sudden trouble leaped into her face.

“But it’s due to me, see. Why not?” And her great eyes flashed triumphantly into the glass. “‘I will attain’ like Paracelsus.”

She laughed again but her mirth had a jar in it.

“He went the wrong way about it,” remarked Mrs. Fellowes placidly, “take care you don’t do the same!”

“He was a fraud to begin with, I’m not, neither in brain nor body.”

Mrs. Fellowes looked at her critically, “the outside of you is flawless enough, and, goodness knows! you are all there as far as brain goes. But I’m not so sure as to the inside of you; there, an inch or so to the left of that diamond star, I believe you are perfectly empty!”

“Ugh! That’s empty of course, except for the bits of you and the rector it holds, there’s been nothing to fill it.”

“A thing must have a capacity for holding before it can hold, my good child, and original capacity dwindles from disuse, as your father’s daughter must know. Atrophy is the word in your jargon, isn’t it?”

“Oh, all glory doesn’t come through that mawkish muscle! I have lived for nineteen years without anything to try the holding capacity of mine, and I can go on for a while yet and get my glory through other channels.”

“No, you can’t, a woman’s crown of glory comes through her heart or it isn’t worth the wearing, her heart leads her reason, and is often the surer guide into the bargain.”

“Why do you speak like this,” said the girl, flushing, and flashing out a white arm towards her, “on my coming-out night? It isn’t fair of you!”

“You brought it on yourself, my Gwen, you’re setting out on a wrong tack. Let yourself go, child, be natural and strive after—nothing. All good will come to you by Divine right.”

A sudden chill ran down Mrs. Fellowes’ back, and a horrid little song began to croon in her ears, “Through much tribulation” were the words of it, and it kept on by fits all that evening.

“Turn round again and let me look at you, dear. Ah, I feel as if it were the coming-out night of my own child!”

There was a quick short catch in her voice. “Kiss me, Gwen, and, darling, don’t think of victory, there’s blood in the very thought! The head and front of a woman’s life is love, God’s, and mother’s, and man’s!”

“You’ve forgotten your audience,” said Gwen sarcastically, “I know nothing of the two first, the third will come, I suppose, in time—by all accounts, it comes always to the beautiful—but I shall not know what on earth to do with it when it arrives, and oh! I don’t want it! I want to ‘live at full pitch’, I couldn’t manage that with my feet clogged with honey!”

“You want to be loved, my dear, to be loved, loved, loved, and when you are, you’ll find out what an arrant little goose you are making of yourself.”

The girl turned suddenly upon her and gave her one of her most volcanic hugs. When Mrs. Fellowes got out of it, panting, she set to putting Gwen’s dress in order with sundry soft touches to neck and arms.

“I do love nice soft girlish flesh,” she said, with a little laugh. “Oh, how I do wish to goodness that John wasn’t a parson this night of all others! I want dreadfully to see you there, but he can’t come, it’s impossible, you know Sam Tidd is dying and even for you I couldn’t go without him!”

“Mrs. Fellowes!” she cried sweeping round, “are you not coming? This is, oh, this is awful! I never looked at your dress, I was so taken up with my own. Oh, to go alone with Lady Mary, and to my first ball!”

Her face was furious, and Mrs. Fellowes could have cried. “I did not tell you at first, I was so astonished at your brilliant completeness, I am sorry.”

Gwen stamped.

“It is atrocious, abominable! To go alone with no one in the room to care a rap how I look! You can’t help it, I know, but oh, you must see the beastliness of the whole thing.”

“The carriage is coming, darling, come down to your mother.”

“I? Certainly not! Mary and Simpson!” she called.

“There, isn’t it lovely?” said Gwen as Simpson wrapped her in her cloak, “I do love the sheeny changes in white plush! Mrs. Fellowes, you will come down with me, won’t you? I hardly know Lady Mary.”

When they came to the foot of the stairs Mary came forward and said in a quick frightened tone,

“Miss Gwen, God bless you, dear! They will be proud of you! The room is well lighted, shall I open the door, Miss?”

“Did they ask for me?” demanded Gwen. She had let her cloak drop and was turning slowly round, that the old woman might have a good view of her.

“Ask, Miss!”—She broke off.

“I know they did not, and they don’t want me either, and Mrs. Fellowes isn’t coming—did you know that? I am glad you like me, Mary!”

She stooped suddenly seeing a tear on Mary’s cheek, and kissed it into a wet smudge on the bed of wrinkles, then she turned and kissed Mrs. Fellowes lightly, and walked down the great hall like a young queen setting out on a triumphal progress.

When Gwen dropped her cloak and displayed herself for Mary’s admiration, she had two spectators she certainly never bargained for.

A wave of the universal excitement had somehow reached Mr. and Mrs. Waring in their learned retirement, probably carried there by Mary’s frequent appearances for trivial causes,—she dared not make any definite suggestion, for fear of Gwen’s most inexorable wrath.

“My love,” said Mr. Waring at last, “something unusual seems to be the matter!”

Mrs. Waring’s brows knitted as usual, then gradually cleared.

“Yes, I really believe this is the occasion of Gwen’s first ball. I remember now Lady Mary mentioning something about it, and—ah, yes, don’t you remember you gave Mrs. Fellowes a cheque for some dresses and other things to do with balls? Ah, nine o’clock, is it really? And I fancy I hear a carriage—didn’t Lady Mary say she would come for her? I think, dear,” she said, “I think, dear, I should like to see Gwen.”

“And I too,” said Mr. Waring, standing up with quiet eagerness, “shall we go to her room? I suppose we might do so,” he added, half fearfully.

It certainly did seem rather a liberty on their part.

“Oh yes, I think that perhaps she might like it.”

So they opened the door and were just about to set forth when the sight of her in shimmering soft waves of silk and tulle, her round column of a neck poised like that of an empress, and her arms thrown out gracefully that Mary might see the whole of her, arrested the two and held them in a silent spell, standing hand in hand on the threshold. Then, hand in hand still, they went back into the library as if in a dream, and over to the deep embrasured window that opened on the carriage drive, and listened to the very last sound of Lady Mary’s wheels. When they came back to the fire there was a tear in Mrs. Waring’s eye, and her husband felt horrid—just as if he had lost a good thought.