"You appear to have a predilection for being murdered," he observed.

"What shall I get you--lemonade?"

She made a negative movement of her head.

"Champagne, please. I'm frightfully tired."

Mr Musgrave poured out a glass of the sparkling wine and handed it to her. He stood behind her while she drank it, and when she finished the wine he took the glass from her and replaced it on the table. When he turned about from performing this office he observed Miss Annersley put out a hand towards a box of cigarettes within reach. He had not suspected before that she smoked. Her action occasioned him a most unpleasant shock. Peggy was to experience a shock also. Before she could select a cigarette and withdraw her hand from the box another hand closed suddenly upon hers and held it firmly. John Musgrave had come quickly behind her and imprisoned her hand with his own.

"Please don't do that," he said. He leaned over the settee, his face almost on a level with hers, his eyes meeting hers steadily. "I've no right to dictate to you... but I wish you wouldn't smoke."

A glint of laughter shone in Peggy's eyes. The situation was growing increasingly funny. In her world, to see women smoke was such an ordinary matter that it had not struck her that anyone--not even John Musgrave--could possibly object. But John, of course, was Moresby, and Moresby had its traditions, and lived by them.

"Why?" she asked.

"It's--unwomanly," he returned seriously.

"Oh!" said Peggy. "What, I wonder, is conveyed exactly by the term 'womanly'? I understood that that expression belonged to the Middle Ages."

"I hope not," Mr Musgrave said.

"Well, define it."

"A womanly woman," Mr Musgrave began slowly, weighing his words as though he felt that the subject were deserving of his utmost care in an appropriate selection of language, "is first and foremost a gentlewoman."

"H'm!" commented Peggy. She was tempted to interrupt him in order to inquire if he did not consider her a gentlewoman, but refrained.

"She is," Mr Musgrave proceeded, "considerate in her actions and in her conversation. She is always sincere and thoughtful for others; and she would never do anything unbecoming to her sex, or unworthy of herself.

That is what I understand by the term womanly."

"She would be a bit dull, don't you think?" Peggy hazarded. "She sounds priggish to me. Do you really believe you would like her, Mr Musgrave? I think you'd be fed up in no time. She wouldn't, for instance, permit you to stand talking to her and holding her hand all the while. That would, according to your definition as I interpret it, be unseemly on her part."

John Musgrave promptly released her hand and straightened himself and looked grave. Peggy laughed.

"That would have been better left unsaid," she remarked demurely. "It was an indiscretion of speech. I fear it would take me a long time to learn how to be womanly, don't you?"

"Don't you think that possibly you are womanly without knowing it?" he asked.

"Shall I tell you what the term womanly conveys to me?" Peggy said.

"If you will," he replied.

"It suggests a woman of a big nature and a warm heart. She doesn't bother her head as to whether what she is doing is becoming; but her conscience troubles her when she does something which is not quite square and honest, which is perhaps a little mean. She strives to be helpful and companionable and sympathetic, and she detests censoriousness and unkind criticism, either in herself or others."

"I am afraid," Mr Musgrave said, with an insight which Peggy had not credited him with possessing, "that you are rebuking me for impertinence."

Peggy flushed, and raised her face quickly to his.

"No," she contradicted; "no. I think you meant to be kind."

There was something very bewitching in Peggy's upturned face, in the unwonted earnestness of her eyes, and the sweetly serious curve of the parted lips. John Musgrave, as he returned her steady gaze, was more powerfully influenced than he had any idea of. He believed that his interest in Peggy was of the paternal, platonic order. Many people become obsessed with the platonic ideal and travel far along the road of life without discovering that between a man and woman platonic affection is unnatural. There have been instances of platonic love, but these are few; it is a rare and an abnormal emotion.

"I wish," he said with unusual impressment, "that you would do something to please me."

"What is that?" inquired Peggy, with an instinctive understanding of what he had it in his mind to ask.

"I want you to promise that you will give up smoking."

Peggy did not alter her position; neither did John Musgrave. As she sat looking up at him, a tiny pucker knitting her brows, he remained bending over her, intently watching her face without the alteration of a muscle in his own. He anticipated her answer; none the less he felt extraordinarily disappointed when she spoke.

"I can't do that," she said. "It isn't," she added slowly, "that I do not wish to oblige you, nor that it would be exactly difficult for me to make such a promise. But I can't recognise any reason why I should. It would be tantamount to an admission that I agree with you that the practice is objectionable. I do not. And I do not wish to encourage your mistaken belief by acquiescing in it. I am sorry. But, you see, I should feel myself something of a humbug if I promised that. I will not, however, offend your sensibilities by smoking in your presence."

"It is the act itself, not the place or time of committing it that is of importance," he said with a touch of displeasure.

Peggy considered this ungracious of him; he might at least have thanked her for her consideration for his feelings.

"In that case," she returned audaciously, "perhaps you will be so kind as to light me a cigarette?"

Mr Musgrave felt annoyed, and showed it.

"No," he answered bluntly. "At the risk of appearing discourteous, I decline to do that."

Peggy was not affronted. She would have thought less of him if he had complied. If one possessed principles, even when they chanced to be mistaken, one had to be consistent and act in accordance with them.

Peggy was faithful to her own principles, and she liked sincerity in others.

At that moment, falling upon the sudden hush in the room which had followed John Musgrave's curt speech, starting on a single note, thrice repeated, and then bursting into a joyous peal, the Moresby chimes broke softly on the stillness, died away on the wind, and were borne back to their listening ears with a fuller, sweeter cadence, conveying the message of the centuries of peace and good-will upon earth. Peggy, when she caught the sound, rose slowly to her feet.

"They'll be assembling in the hall now," she said, and looked at John Musgrave. "We had better join them."

"Yes," he said.

Suddenly she held out her hand.

"Peace and good-will," she said, smiling. "We've got to be friends, you know, on Christmas morning."

"Yes," agreed John Musgrave, consulting the clock. "But it wants ten minutes to the hour yet."

Peggy broke into a little laugh and withdrew her hand hastily before he could take it.

"Your speech admits of only one interpretation," she said; "you don't wish to befriends before the hour strikes."

"My remark must have been very misleading to have conveyed that impression," he returned. "I was not aware that we were upon unfriendly terms. A difference of opinion does not necessitate the breaking of a friendship."

"Perhaps not," agreed Peggy, looking amused. "But it strains the relationship somewhat. Come along, Mr Musgrave, and toast the friendship in a bumper of milk punch."

Mr Musgrave accompanied her from the room, and emerging at her side into the great hall, already thronged with the other guests, was instantly separated from his companion by half a dozen eager young men, who bore Peggy away among them and left Mr Musgrave on the outskirts, as it were, of the festivities, looking, as he felt, utterly stranded and out of touch with his surroundings.

Miss Simpson, who had sought in vain for him throughout the evening, seeing him standing alone, so evidently out of his element, made her determined way across the width of the hall and joined him. Mr Musgrave did not feel as grateful to her as he might have felt. He spent much of his time on these social evenings in carefully avoiding her. But it is not always possible to evade a person whose purpose in life it is to frustrate this aim, particularly when the object of the pursuit shrinks from hurting the pursuer's feelings, Therefore when Miss Simpson hurried up to Mr Musgrave, with anxiety and determination in her eyes, he received her with the reserved politeness of a perfectly courteous person, accepting the inevitable with a fairly good grace.

"They are going to sing 'Auld Lang Syne,'" she said. "I loathe these stupid customs. But one cannot make one's self conspicuous; one has to do as the rest do."