a perfect home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too
had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose
death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their two
daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like
his own mother, and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded
him of his cousin Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her
life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.
Ah! What a pretty girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly
in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy,
with blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the young
man she had talked of in her letters during the last three weeks. Were
they never going to stop?

He passed into view of those within, and said: