“Rhoda,” said Mrs. Daye, as her daughter entered the drawing-room next morning, “I have thought it all out, and have decided to ask them. Mrs. St. George quite agrees with me. She says, sound the Military Secretary first, and of course I will; but she thinks they are certain to accept. Afterward we’ll have the whole party photographed on the back verandah—I don’t see how they could get out of it—and that will be a souvenir for you, if you like.”

The girl sank into a deep easy chair and crossed her knees with deliberation. She was paler than usual; she could not deny a certain lassitude. As her mother spoke she put up her hand to hide an incipient yawn, and then turned her suffused eyes upon that lady, with the effect of granting a weary but necessary attention.

“You have decided to ask them?” she asked, with absent-minded interrogation. “Whom?”

“How ridiculous you are, Rhoda! The Viceroy and Lady Scansleigh, of course! As if there could be the slightest doubt about anybody else! You will want to know next what I intend to ask them to. I have never known a girl take so little interest in her own wedding.”

“That brings us to the point,” said Rhoda.

An aroused suspicion shot into Mrs. Daye’s brown eyes. “What point, pray? No nonsense, now, Rhoda!”

“No nonsense this time, mummie; but no wedding either. I have decided—finally—not to marry Mr. Ancram.”

Mrs. Daye sat upright—pretty, plump, determined. She really looked at the moment as if she could impose her ideas upon anybody. She had a perception of the effect, to this end, of an impressive tournure. Involuntarily she put a wispish curl in its place, and presented to her daughter the outline of an unexceptionable shoulder and sleeve.

“Your decision comes too late to be effectual, Rhoda. People do not change their minds in such matters when the wedding invitations are actually——”

“Written out to be lithographed—but not ordered yet, mummie.”

“In half an hour they will be.”

“Would have been, mummie dear.”

Mrs. Daye assumed the utmost severity possible to a countenance intended to express only the amenities of life, and took her three steps toward the door. “This is childish, Rhoda,” she said over her shoulder, “and I will not remain to listen to it. Retraction on your part at this hour would be nothing short of a crying scandal, and I assure you once for all that neither your father nor I will hear of it.”

Mrs. Daye reached the door very successfully. Rhoda turned her head on its cushion, and looked after her mother in silence, with a half-deprecating smile. Having achieved the effect of her retreat, that lady turned irresolutely.

“I cannot remain to listen to it,” she repeated, and stooped to pick up a pin.

“Oh, do remain, mummie! Don’t behave like the haughty and hard-hearted mamma of primitive fiction; she is such an old-fashioned person. Do remain and be a nice, reasonable, up-to-date mummie: it will save such a lot of trouble.”

“You don’t seem to realise what you are talking of throwing over!”

Mrs. Daye, in an access of indignation, came as far back as the piano.

“Going down to dinner before the wives of the Small Cause Court! What a worldly lady it is!”

“I wish,” Mrs. Daye ejaculated mentally, “that I had been brought up to manage daughters.” What she said aloud, with the effect of being forced to do so, was that Rhoda had also apparently forgotten that her sister Lettice was to come out next year. Before the gravity of this proposition Mrs. Daye sank into the nearest chair. And the expense, with new frocks for Darjiling, would be really——

“All the arguments familiar to the pages of the Family Herald,” the girl retorted, a dash of bitterness in her amusement, “‘with a little store of maxims, preaching down a daughter’s heart!’ Aren’t you ashamed, mummie! But you needn’t worry about that. I’ll go back to England and live with Aunt Jane: she dotes on me. Or I’ll enter the Calcutta Medical College and qualify as a lady-doctor. I shouldn’t like the cutting up, though—I really shouldn’t.”

“Rhoda, tu me fais mal! If you could only be serious for five minutes together. I suppose you have some absurd idea that Mr. Ancram is not sufficiently—demonstrative. But that will all come in due time, dear.”

The girl laughed so uncontrollably that Mrs. Daye suspected herself of an unconscious witticism, and reflected a compromising smile.

“You think I could win his affections afterwards. Oh! I should despair of it. You have no idea how coy he is, mummie!”

Mrs. Daye made a little grimace of sympathy, and threw up her eyes and her hands. They laughed together, and then the elder lady said with severity that her daughter was positively indecorous. “Nothing could have been more devoted than his conduct yesterday afternoon. ‘How ridiculously happy,’ was what Mrs. St. George said—‘how ridiculously happy those two are!’”

Mrs. Daye had become argumentative and plaintive. She imparted the impression that if there was another point of view—which she doubted—she was willing to take it.

“Oh! no doubt it was evident enough,” Rhoda said tranquilly: “we had both been let off a bad bargain. An afternoon I shall always remember with pleasure.”

“Then you have actually done it—broken with him!”

“Yes.”

“Irrevocably?”

“Very much so.”

“Do tell me how he took it!”

“Calmly. With admirable fortitude. It occupied altogether about ten minutes, with digressions. I’ve never kept any of his notes—he doesn’t write clever notes—and you know I’ve always refused to wear a ring. So there was nothing to return except Buzz, which wouldn’t have been fair to Buzz. It won’t make a scandal, will it, my keeping Buzz? He’s quite a changed dog since I’ve had him, and I love him for himself alone. He doesn’t look in the least,” Rhoda added, thoughtfully regarding the terrier curled up on the sofa, who turned his brown eyes on her and wagged his tail without moving, “like a Secretariat puppy.”

“And is that all?”

“That’s all—practically.”

“Well, Rhoda, of course I had to think of your interests first—any mother would; but if it’s really quite settled, I must confess that I believe you are well out of it, and I’m rather relieved myself. When I thought of being that man’s mother-in-law I used to be thankful sometimes that your father would retire so soon—which was horrid, dear.”

“I can understand your feelings, mummie.”

“I’m sure you can, dear: you are always my sympathetic child. I wouldn’t have married him for worlds! I never could imagine how you made up your mind to it in the first place. Now, I suppose that absurd Mrs. St. George will go on with her theory that no daughter of mine will ever marry in India, because the young men find poor old me so amusing!”

“She’s a clever woman—Mrs. St. George,” Rhoda observed.

“And now that we’ve had our little talk, dear, there’s one thing I should like you to take back—that quotation from Longfellow, or was it Mrs. Hemans?—about a daughter’s heart, you know.” Mrs. Daye inclined her head coaxingly towards the side. “I shouldn’t like to have that to remember between us, dear,” she said, and blew her nose with as close an approach to sentiment as could possibly be achieved in connection with that organ.

“You ridiculous old mummie! I assure you it hadn’t the slightest application.”

“Then that’s all right,” Mrs. Daye returned, in quite her sprightly manner. “I’ll refuse the St. Georges’ dinner on Friday night; it’s only decent that we should keep rather quiet for a fortnight or so, till it blows over a little. And we shall get rid of you, my dear child, I’m perfectly certain, quite soon enough,” she added over her shoulder, as she rustled out. “With your brains, you might even marry very well at home. But your father is sure to be put out about this—awfully put out!”

“Do you know, Buzz,” murmured Rhoda a moment later (the terrier had jumped into her lap), “if I had been left an orphan in my early youth, I fancy I would have borne it better than most people.”