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shriek. You have not seen it? You do not know whether it is a success? Where is it?”
    â€œGranny is going to send it here in time for the ball,” Joan said demurely. “I can’t help it, Cynthia—she would have her own way about it.”
    â€œBut this is terrible!” Cynthia clasped her hands in real distress. “It may—nay, it probably will—be something appalling. I wish I had ordered another for you myself. Reggie said this morning I ought to have done so.”
    â€œThere is nothing to do but to make the best of it,” Joan answered.
    The conversation took place in Mrs. Trewhistle’s bedroom. It was the day of the ball, and at Cynthia’s urgent request Joan had been allowed to come over in time for tea and to dress at her cousin’s. Now, Cynthia in her pretty chiffon tea-gown was eyeing Joan’s severe black frock with obvious disapproval.
    â€œIt is too bad,” she grumbled. “Just when I particularly wanted you to look nice, and all my things are much too small for you. Celestine”—as her maid came into the room—“see if you can find the Brussels lace I was looking at this morning. I want it for Mademoiselle. Is Aunt Ursula persisting in that absurd idea of hers, Joan?” as the maid departed on her errand. “Insisting on finding that sister of yours? It makes Reggie so angry when he thinks of it.”
    â€œFinding Evelyn? Yes I think so,” Joan assented. “Don’t call it an absurd idea, Cynthia. Evelyn has as good a right to be at Warchester as I have. How I loved her years ago! And how strange it seems to remember that I was that lonely little child in the coachman’s house at the back of the mews!”
    Cynthia made a little grimace.
    â€œYour sister couldn’t have cared for you much, Joan, or she would not have lost sight of you all this time. I should not, I know.”
    â€œI am sure she loved me,” said Joan with conviction. “Her letters used to be full of the happy time that was coming when we should be together again—her little sister Polly, she used to call me. I have sometimes wondered whether my stepmother kept back her letters after I came to Warchester, for I have never heard from Evie since.” 
    â€œPerhaps she did,” Cynthia replied indifferently. Her private opinion was that if Mrs. Spencer had kept back the letters she had for once done Joan a good turn. “But if Aunt Ursula finds her now and leaves Warchester to her it will be a wicked shame and I shall tell her so!”
    Joan smiled, knowing that Cynthia’s brave speeches were seldom dangerous.
    â€œI wonder whether she will? Certainly Evelyn has the better right to—to everything. She is the elder.”
    â€œWhat does that matter when you have lived here so many years? But I hope that they will not find her. Ah, Celestine, that is right!” as the maid returned with a scarf of valuable lace. Mrs. Trewhistle draped it about Joan’s figure. “There, that is better!” she said, standing back to admire her handiwork. “Now come, Joan!”
    Downstairs in the hall, before the big fire of logs, two men were standing. They looked up as soon as the sound of Cynthia’s laugh on the stairs reached them. One was Reginald Trewhistle, the master of the house, and the other was a tall, dark, broad-shouldered man, whose clean-shaven face had a look of strength and power, whose abundant dark hair was already thickly streaked with grey. As he glanced upwards at the two women, a gleam of admiration sprang into his deep-set grey eyes.
    As she waited a moment at the bend of the stairs and smiled down at Cynthia, Joan made an exquisite picture; against Cynthia’s fluffy elegance the long, severe lines of her sombre gown had the grace of absolute simplicity; the dark oak of the wainscoting threw into high relief the small head, with its crown of waving hair, set flowerlike on the