"So do I, and I'm sure she deserves to be. If she's as kind and loving to her husband as she has been to her father, we shan't hear any complaints. Dear me! What a bit of news!"

He was silent a moment.

"How we old folk get out of touch with young people!" he said. "If I had been told to guess who it was who would ask Helena to be his wife, I should have said it was Archie. Didn't you think that Archie was very fond of her?"

Mixed with Jessie's misery for Archie's sake, and with her bitter contempt for her sister, was a pity for Helena, as deep as the sea, that she could be what she was. She could wear the roses Archie had sent her, and not be burned alive by them…

"I never though that Helena really cared for him," she said quietly.

"No? Well, you were more clear-sighted than I. But I fancy Marion thought so too. He's dining with us to-night, isn't he? Or will Helena put him off? And are we to say anything to him about it?"

"I expect Helena will tell us what she wishes," said Jessie.

He laughed.

"No doubt she will. She—what's the phrase?—she pulls the strings in this piece, doesn't she? Bless me, it's after six o'clock. We might go across the bridge and have a stoll in Battersea Park. I expect Helena will like to be left alone. Yes; what is it?"

The parlour-maid had come in, with the request that Colonel Vautier would go to see Helena for a minute now, or some time before dinner. Accordingly he went upstairs, in high good humour, stumbling on the carpet-rods.

"Oh, daddy, how sweet of you to come to me at once!" she said. "Archie's dining here to-night, and I think I will tell him my news myself. He's such a dear; it would hurt him to hear it from anybody else."

Colonel Vautier felt that he had perhaps not been so wrong after all.

"Yes, my dear, that is kind and thoughtful of you," he said.

"So I'll tell him as soon as he gets here," said she. "Will you and

Jessie be very kind and let me have two minutes with him?"

Helena's eyes wandered away a minute, and returned rather dewy to her father's face.

"Perhaps you would tell Jessie for me," she said.

She opened her eyes very wide, in a sort of childlike bewilderment.

"I wonder why Jessie is so cold to me," she said. "I must have vexed her somehow without meaning it. I feel sad about it. She did not say one word when I told you and her my news; she did not kiss me…"

"Jessie is never very demonstrative," said her father, intending to speak to Jessie about this.

"No; perhaps that's all. Thank you ever so much, daddy."

She watched them going out together, and thought what a pity it was that some people were so frank as to say that others revolted them, even though they apologized afterwards. It never paid to be coarse and rude like that…

Helena, according to her plan, was in the drawing-room among his roses when Archie arrived.

"It was delicious of you to send them," she said. "And I've got—something for you."

"Hurrah!" said Archie. "What is it?"

She had put a half sovereign and a half-crown on the corner of the mantel-piece, and handed it to him.

"A tip?" he said.

"No; a bet. I am poor but honest."

He looked at the money.

"Twelve and six?" he said. "When did you bet me twelve-and-six?"

Helena came a step closer to him. Even in the middle of London there was something of sea-wind and open spaces about Archie.

"Oh, you stupid boy!" she said. "How many half-crowns is that?"

Suddenly Archie remembered the wager he had made with her one morning in the Park, that Lord Harlow would propose to her before the end of the season. He pocketed the money with a shout of laughter.

"Ha! I knew I should win," he said, "but it wasn't nice of me to laugh.

I take back the laugh. Poor old Bradshaw! Did he mind much?"

Helena looked at him, still standing close to him, smiling and in silence. She really found him most attractive at that moment, and she wondered with how changed a face he would presently look at her.

"Yes, he proposed to me this afternoon," she said, still smiling, and still looking at him.

"Well, poor old Bradshaw!" said Archie once more. But he did not say it with quite the same confidence.

She laid her hand, that soft hand with sheathed claws, on his arm.

"Archie, aren't you going to wish me happiness?" she asked.

The lines of his laughter still lingered on his handsome mouth, but now they were merely stamped there and meant nothing.

"Wish you happiness?" he rapped out in a hard snappish voice.

"Yes; isn't it usual between friends?"

"Do you mean you've accepted him?" he asked.

"Yes, my dear. Haven't I told you?"

"Is it a joke?" he asked. "Shall I laugh?"

Helena moved a little away from him, and rang the bell. Archie looked so strange. She had expected something far more moving and dramatic than this wooden immobility.

"Tell Colonel Vautier and Miss Jessie that Lord Davidstow has come," she said to the parlour-maid.

Archie said nothing till the door had closed again. He felt that he was made of wood, that everything was made of wood, he and Helena and the roses he had sent, and the Persian rug on which he stood. And when he spoke, it was as if a machine in his mouth said the words which had nothing whatever to do with him.

"I congratulate you," he said. "I hope you will be very happy."