It would certainly have been better, he ruefully admitted, if he had not meddled so much with Eugenie's youth.

And presently he supposed he should have to forgive Charlie!--( Charlie was the son who had married his nurse)--if only to prove to himself that he was not really the unfeeling or snobbish father of the story-books.
Ah! there was the upstairs door! Should he show himself, and make Arthur understand that he was their dear friend all the same, and always would be ?--it was only a question of a little drawing-in.
But his courage failed him.

He heard the well-known step come downstairs and cross the hall.

The front door closed, and Lord Findon was still balancing the paper-knife.
Would he really marry that nice child Elsie?
Elsie Bligh was a cousin of the Findons; a fair-haired, slender slip of a thing, the daughter of a retired Indian general.

The Findons had given a ball the year before for her coming-out, and she had danced through the season, haloed, Euphrosyne-like, by a charm of youth and laughter--till she met Arthur Welby.