along the road he wished to travel.

But he dared not point out to Annesley the fun of the situation. To do so
would be to put her against him and it.

She, too, had a sense of humour, suppressed by five years of Mrs.
Ellsworth, but coming delightfully to life, like a half-frozen bird, in
the sunshine of safety and happiness. Knight appealed to and encouraged
it often, for he could not have lived with a humourless woman, no matter
how sweet.

Yet he did not dare wake it where her cousins were concerned. Her sense
of honour was more valuable to him than her sense of humour. He was
afraid to put the former on the defensive, and he was glad to let her
believe the Annesley-Setons were genuinely "warming" to them in a way
which proved that blood was thicker than water.

The girl had wondered from the first why he was determined to make
friends with these cousins whom she had never known, and he was grateful
because she believed in him too loyally to attribute his desire to
"snobbishness." He wished her to suppose he had set his heart on
providing her with influential guidance on the threshold of a new life;
and it was important that she should not begin criticizing his motives.

By the time dinner was over Constance Annesley-Seton had decided that the
Nelson Smiths had been sent to her by the Powers that Be, and that it
would be tempting Providence not to annex them. Not that she put it in
that way to herself, for she did not trouble her mind about Providence.
All she knew was that she and Dick would be fools to let the chance slip.