If he entertained the smallest doubt on that head, the doubt would have been dispelled could he have looked at the moment upon the picture of Mr Musgrave seated with his late partner in a retired spot, screened from the curious by tall palms and other pot-plants, to which retreat Peggy had led him, as she led only her favoured partners, at the finish of the dance. Mr Musgrave sat forward in his seat, fingering one of the blush roses which had fallen from Peggy's dress when she left the ballroom. A clumsy movement of his own towards the finish of the dance had been responsible for the damage, as he was well aware. He had picked up the rose when it fell, and he was now smoothing and touching its petals as he held it lightly between his fingers, as once he had smoothed and touched, and idly played with and destroyed, a glove which she had dropped.

"I fear," he said, "I am in fault for the detachment of this. You will begin to think me a very clumsy person."

"Those little accidents happen so often when one is dancing," she replied. "It is of no consequence."

"It could, perhaps," he suggested, "be sewn on again."

"I don't think it is worth bothering about," she answered. "Besides, it is broken off at the head. Never mind the rose; it isn't a real one. I hope you weren't horribly bored at dancing with me? I believe you only danced because--"

She paused. Mr Musgrave, still fingering the silken petals of the rose, looked up inquiringly.

"Why do you think I danced?" he asked.

"Because I asked you to," she answered, smiling.

He smiled too.

"No," he contradicted. "The idea certainly arose from your suggestion.

I doubt whether I should have the courage to inflict myself on anyone as a dance partner without that encouragement. But I had another reason."

"Tell me," she said softly, and looked at him with so demure an expression, and then looked away again even more demurely, so that had the vicar chanced upon this tableau also he would assuredly have applied to her the term he had once made use of to his wife in speaking of her; he would have called her a little baggage. But the vicar was not there to see, and John Musgrave rather liked the demure expression. He had an altogether different term for it, which was "womanly."

"If it interests you to know," he said, "I had in remembrance the occasion when I declined to oblige you in the matter of the tableaux. I did not desire to appear ungracious a second time."

"Then," said Peggy, in a low voice, and still without looking at him, "you danced to please me."

"You have stated my reason correctly this time," John Musgrave answered quietly. "I wanted to please you."

He rose as the sound of the music broke upon their ears, and offered her his arm.

"And now I am going to please myself," he said, "and watch you dancing this."

When he led her back to the ballroom and delivered her to her partner he became aware as he stood for a moment alone at the entrance to the crowded room that he still held the silken rose in his hand. He looked at it in some perplexity. Mr Musgrave was a man of tidy habits; to drop the rose upon the floor was not a tidy habit; it would, moreover, be in the way, and it would certainly get crushed. He slipped it instead into his pocket. Clearly in the circumstances that was the best thing to do with it. The present difficulty of the disposal of the rose being thus overcome, Mr Musgrave dismissed from his mind the embarrassment of its further disposal and turned his attention to the agreeable occupation of observing the graceful evolutions of the various couples on the floor; and if his eyes followed one figure more particularly, other eyes were doing the same, so that it could not be said of him that he was in any way peculiar in his preference for watching the prettiest and most graceful dancer in the room.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

When Peggy Annersley got out of her ball-dress in the early hours of that New Year's morning she slipped on a comfortable dressing-gown and sat down before the fire and lighted a cigarette, while she awaited the arrival of her sister, whose room adjoined hers, and who, on separating outside the bedroom door, had stated her intention of joining her to talk over the evening before going to bed. Peggy was very agreeable to talk over anything. She was not in the least sleepy, and only pleasantly tired. Excitement with her acted as a nerve-tonic, and the night had not been without its excitements.

Sophy entering in a similarly comfortable deshabille, and approaching the hearth, hairbrush in hand, surprised her sister looking contemplatively into the flames and smiling at her thoughts. She was wondering--and it was this speculation which brought the smile to her lips--what John had done with her rose. She had made some search for it after he had left and had failed to discover it. It crossed her mind that perhaps John made a practice of collecting such souvenirs.

"You look," said Sophy, as she stood for a moment and scrutinised the smiling face, "wicked. A lifelong acquaintance with your facial expressions leads me to conclude that you are indulging in a review of your conquests. Vanity will be your undoing, Peg o' my heart."

"Sit down," said Peggy, "and have a cigarette."

Sophy took a cigarette, but she did not immediately light it. She put her slippered feet on the fender and continued her study of her sister's face. Seen in the flicker of the firelight, with the brown curls falling about her shoulders, Peggy made a charming picture. She looked so surprisingly young and so full of the joy of life. But she was not young, Sophy reflected. In a few years she would be thirty, and after thirty a woman loses her youth.

"I like Doctor Fairbridge," Sophy remarked, with an abruptness that caused the smile to fade, though the challenge did not, she observed, produce any other effect.

"So do I," agreed Peggy.

"He is in love with you," said Sophy.

"He thinks he is," Peggy corrected. "I expect he often finds himself in that condition."

"That's hedging, Peggy. He isn't half bad. You might do worse."

"I might. I daresay I shall," returned Peggy unmoved.

"You'll die an old maid, my Pegtop; men are none too plentiful."

"I can even contemplate that condition undismayed," Peggy replied calmly. "The unmarried woman is the best off, if she would only recognise it. Marriage is--"

She paused, at a loss for a fitting definition, and during the pause Sophy lighted her cigarette and smoked it thoughtfully and looked into the fire.

"Marriage isn't the heaven many people think, I know," she allowed; "but it--settles one."

"It settles two as a rule," Peggy retorted flippantly.

She wrinkled her brows and stared into the fire likewise, and was silent awhile.

"I have never heard you so eloquent on marriage before," she said presently. "I don't believe, as a matter of fact, I have heard you discuss the subject until now. Are you contemplating it?"

Sophy laughed consciously.

"There's some one," she confided, and hesitated, aware of her sister's quickened interest. "But he's poor," she added hastily. "He's an architect too. One day, perhaps..."

"One day, of course," Peggy returned softly, and got up and kissed the young, earnest face.

"I'm so glad, dear. I want to hear all about him."

"Another time," said Sophy, smiling. "I am a little shy of talking about him yet. But he is a dear."

"I am sure he is, or you wouldn't care for him."

Peggy stood in front of the fire with her back to it, and regarded her sister critically. She regretted that Sophy's romance had not sooner revealed itself. Assuredly, if their aunt had known of it, the dear would have been included in the Hall party.

"And so we have the reason for your newly-awakened interest in the affairs of the heart of less fortunate folk," she remarked presently.

"That's rather nice of you, Sophy. Most people when they have 'settled'

themselves don't care a flick of the fingers about the settlement of the world in general."

"I don't suppose I feel especially concerned about the world in general myself," replied Sophy. "You can scarcely class yourself in that category."

"Oh, it's I?" said Peggy, smiling ironically. "I thought it was Doctor Fairbridge you were particularly interested in."

"He is nice," Sophy insisted.

"Is he? He didn't happen to tell you, I suppose, as he did me when we first met, with an air of weary resignation to the obligation of his profession, that he had to marry because unmarried medical men were at a disadvantage?"

Sophy looked amused.