A variety of reasons kept the Allonbys very silent as they drove home that night.

When Mansfield Road was reached, they walked into the hall, still in the same silence. Osmond dismissed the cabman, followed them in, and made fast the bars and bolts for the night.

"Good-night, old man," said Jac, coming up for a kiss.

"Good-night, young woman," he replied, with the air of one who does not intend to be drawn into conversation.

"Girls," said Hilda, over the stairs. "Sal has put a fire in my bed-room. Come along."

Jac flew upstairs. Wyn lingered a moment.

"Are you coming to bed, Osmond?" she said, anxiously, as she saw him unlock the door leading to the studio.

"I think I'll have a pipe first," he answered, in a constrained voice. "Run to bed and don't bother."

She hesitated a moment, but, seeing that interference would be useless, went on upstairs, and joined the sÉance round Hilda's fire.

"Well," said Hilda, with a long sigh, "it was a delightful dance, wasn't it?"

"The nicest I was ever at," returned Jac, with smiles dimpling round her mouth.

Wyn did not echo these comments. She sat down with a sigh, and pulled off her gloves.

"How well our lilies have lasted, Hilda," said Jac, spying at her own head in the glass. "Not a bit faded, are they? Wyn, you old wretch, you did look well. How everybody praised you up. I should think your head is turned."

"Humph!" was Wyn's discontented reply.

There was a pause, during which Jac secured Hilda's programme, and stealthily examined it.

"Well!" said Wyn, suddenly. "Now you have seen Lady Mabel, what do you think of her."

"She is exactly what I expected," observed Jac, who was possessed of considerable acumen. "That impulsive, frank manner is of great service to her. Nothing escapes her notice, I can tell you! She has decided not to take us up as a family. She does not feel quite sure as to what we might do. Vaguely she feels that Hilda and I are formidable, and poor Osmond, of course, is to be steadily discouraged. She will ask you, Wyn, because you are rather a celebrity just now; but nobody else."

"Jac—I think you misjudge——"

"All right. Wait a fortnight. If an invitation comes for Osmond, Hilda, or me, to Bruton Street, I will humbly apologise for my uncharitable judgment."

"Jac is right," said Hilda, suddenly. "I spied Lady Mabel's eye upon me when I approached with Mr. Percivale!"

"By the way, do you like Mr. Percivale?" asked Wyn.

"I should think so!" was the emphatic answer.

Wyn passed her hand wearily over her brow.

"You look very tired, dear child," said Hilda, sympathetically.

"I am worried—about Osmond," she sighed. "I would give so much if—all that—had never taken place between him and Elsa. One sees now how hopeless—how insane the bare idea is; but I am afraid he doesn't think so, poor fellow!"

"Lady Mabel was very off-hand with him," said Jac. "I was near when she was ready to go, and Elsa was dancing with Osmond. Do you know, she danced five times with him."

"It was too bad of her!" cried Wyn.

"If she does not mean to marry him, it certainly was," said Hilda.

"Mean to marry him! They would not let her! I am thankful at least that there was no engagement," returned Wynifred, with energy. "That would just save his dignity, poor fellow, if one could restrain him, but I know he will rush like a moth to his candle, and get a fearful snub from Lady Mabel." She covered her face with her hands. "I can think of nothing else—I can't forget it," she said. "He will never get over it. He was never in love before in all his life."

"Won't his pride help him? I would do anything—anything," said Hilda, with vehemence, "sooner than let her see I was heart-broken.... I suppose she will marry Mr. Percivale."

"Or Mr. Cranmer," suggested Jac, in an off-hand way. "That is what Lady Mabel intends, I should think."

Wynifred winced painfully. It seemed as though Osmond's case were thrust before her eyes as a warning of what she had to expect. It braced—it nerved her to the approaching struggle. She would never be sick of love; and she determined boldly to face the sleepless night which she knew awaited her—to work hard, go to parties, anything, everything which might serve as an antidote to the poison she had imbibed that fatal summer.

When at last the girls separated for the night, Osmond was still in his studio. It was not till six o'clock had struck that Wyn's wakeful ears heard his footstep on the stairs, and the latch of his bed-room door close quietly.

Jac's prophecy was fulfilled. A few days brought an invitation to Wynifred from Lady Mabel to meet a few friends at dinner in Bruton Street. No mention was made in the note of either Osmond or the girls.

"I shall not go!" cried Wyn, fiercely.

"Wyn, my dear child, listen to me," said Hilda, with authority. "You must go. Beggars musn't be choosers. Look here what she says—'to meet several people who may be of use to you.' Oh, my dear child, you have published one successful novel, but your fortune is not made yet, is it? Think of poor old Osmond—think how important it is that we should all do the best we can for ourselves. In my opinion you ought to go. What do you say, Jac?"

"I suppose you must; but I should like to let Lady Mabel know my opinion of her," said Jac, grudgingly.

"Be just," urged Hilda. "Lady Mabel very likely thinks that to take us out of our sphere and to plant us in hers for a few hours would be to unfit us for our work. I believe she is right. What good would it do us to sit at her table and talk to men who would only tolerate us because we were her guests? Answer me that."

Jac said nothing.

"You see I am right," went on Hilda, triumphing. "She merely thinks, as Aunt Anna does, that we had better remain in our humble station; and it would be simple cruelty of her to invite Osmond under existing circumstances. It would be tantamount to giving him encouragement, would it not?"

Osmond himself, somewhat to his sister's surprise, when he heard of the invitation, was most anxious that she should accept it. It seemed as if anything which brought the two families together, however indirectly, was pleasant to him. On the subject of himself and Elsa he, however, quite declined to talk; and this reserve of his was to Wyn a dangerous symptom. However, he was very quiet, and had not yet made the suggestion his sisters dreaded, namely, that one of them should go with him to call on Lady Mabel.

Sometimes Wyn almost hoped that he had realised the futility of his desires, since Elsa would not be twenty-one till the following Christmas, and it was madness to suppose that Mr. Percivale would not press his suit before then. Sometimes she dreaded that, as we say of children, he was quiet because he was in mischief—in other words, that he was corresponding with Elsa, or otherwise intriguing; though this was not like Osmond.

With surmises she was forced to rest content, however. The invitation to dinner was accepted, and then came wretched days of hesitation and cowardice—days when she endured continual fluctuations of feeling, at one moment feeling as though all her future hung on that dinner-party, at another that nothing should induce her to go when the time came.

She had not, however, very much leisure for reflection just at this period. One of the monthly magazines wrote to ask a serial story from her on very short notice, and she was obliged to devote her attention to the expansion and completion of an unfinished fragment for which, before the appearance of "Cicely Montfort," she had tried to find a publisher in vain. On the third day after the Miles' ball, as she returned from a walk, she found Claud's card in the hall. After the first moment of keen disappointment, she was glad that she had not seen him.

What use to feed a flame she was bent on smothering?

She learned from Sal that the visitor had been into the studio and seen Mr. Osmond, and to the studio she accordingly bent her steps. Osmond was not working. He was seated on the edge of the "throne," his palette and brushes idle beside him, his face hidden in his hands. At the sound of the opening door, he leaped to his feet, and faced his sister half angrily.

"You startled me," said he.

"I am sorry. I hear you had a visitor to-day, so I came to know what he said."

"Oh, yes—Cranmer. He didn't say very much. Asked after you all; said he hoped you were not very tired after the dance; said he was looking forward to seeing you at his sister's. Not much besides. He seems very thick with this Mr. Percivale."

Turning aside, he aimlessly took up a dry brush and drew it across a finished canvas in slow sweeps.

"Wyn," he asked, "who is this Mr. Percivale?"

Wyn made a gesture of ignorance with her hands.

"I don't know," she said. "Nobody knows much about him. Mr. Cranmer told me all he knows the other evening." She related the meagre facts which Claud had given her. "But everyone seems agreed that he is very much all that can be wished," said she. "What made you ask me, dear?"

"I have been talking to Ottilie Orton," he said; and paused.

"To Mrs. Orton! And what had she to say, if one may ask?"

"You appear," observed Osmond, "to have taken a dislike to the lady in question."

"Well, I cannot say she fascinates me. She is so big and bold, and she looks artificial. She reminds me of that dreadful middle-aged Miss Walters who married the small, shy young curate of St. Mary's."

"She is a very handsome woman," said Osmond obstinately.

"Well, never mind her looks. What has she been saying to you?"

"Oh, she merely remarked," was the reply, as Osmond picked up his palette and charged a clean brush with color. "She merely made a remark about this Mr. Percivale whom everyone is so ready to take for granted."

"What was the remark?"

"She said there were several ugly stories afloat about him, and that—" he paused to put a deliberate touch upon his almost completely finished picture—"that his antecedents were most questionable."