She nodded and with sleepy pleasure she piled food on a plate.

We sat round the table, Alvean, Peter, Celestine, Sir Thomas, Connan and Lady Treslyn.

It seemed like a dream that I should be there with them. Alice’s brooch glittered on my dress, and I thought: Thus, two years ago, she would have sat . as I am sitting now. Alvean would not have been here then; she would have been too young to have been allowed to come, but apart from that and the fact that I was in Alice’s place, it must have been very like other occasions. I wondered if any of the others thought this.

I remembered the face I had seen at the peep, and what Alvean had said on the night of that other ball. I could not remember the exact words but I knew that it had been some thing about her mother’s love of dancing and how, if she came back, she would come to a ball. Then Alvean had half-hoped to see her among the dancers. What if she watched from another place? I thought of that ghostly solarium in moonlight and I said to myself: ” Whose face did I see at the peep?”

Then I thought: Gilly! What if it were Gilly? It must have been Gilly.

Who else could it have been?

My attention was brought back to the group at the table when Connan said: ” I’ll get you some more whisky, Tom.” He rose and went to the buffet. Lady Treslyn got up quickly and went to him. I found it difficult to take my eyes from them. I thought how distinguished they looked she in green shaded mauve draperies, the most beautiful woman at the ball and he, surely the most distinguished of the men.

” I’ll help you, Connan,” she said, and I heard them laughing together.

” Look out,” said Connan, ” we’re spilling it.”

They had their backs to us, and as I watched them I thought that with the slightest provocation I could have burst into tears because now I dearly saw the ridiculousness of my hopes.

She had slipped her arm through his as they came back to the table.

The intimate gesture wounded me deeply. I suppose I had drunk too much of the mead, or metheglin as they called it. Mead. It was such a soft and gentle name. But the mead which was made at Mount Mellyn was very potent.

I said to myself coldly: It is time you retired.

As he gave the glass to Sir Thomas—who emptied it with a speed which surprised me—I noticed that there were smudges of shadow under Alvean’s eyes, and I said: ” Alvean, you look tired. You should be in bed.”

” Poor child!” cried Celestine at once. ” And she only just recovering….”

I rose. ” I will take Alvean to bed now,” I said. ” Come along, Alvean.”

She was half-asleep already and made no protest but rose meekly to her feet.

” I will say good night to you all,” I said.

Peter rose to his feet. ” We’ll see you later,” he said.

I did not answer. I was desperately trying not to look at Connan, for I felt he was not aware of me; that he would never be aware of anyone when Lady Treslyn was near.

” Au revoir,” said Peter, and as the others echoed the words absentmindedly I went out of the punch room, holding Alvean by the hand.

I felt as Cinderella must have felt with the striking of the midnight hour.

My brief glory was over. Lady Treslyn had made me realise how foolish I had been to dream.

Alvean was asleep before I felt her room. I tried not to think of Connan and Lady Treslyn while I went to my room and lighted the candles on my dressing table. I looked attractive; there was no doubt of it. Then. I said to myself. Anyone looks attractive by candlelight.

The diamonds winked back at me, and I was immediately reminded of the face I had seen at the peep.

I thought afterwards that I must have drunk too freely of the metheglin, because on impulse I went down to the landing below my own.

I could hear the shouts coming from the servants’ hall. So they were still merry-making down there. The door to Gilly’s room was ajar, and I went in. There was enough moonlight for me to see that the child was in her bed, but sitting up, awake.

” Gilly,” I said.

” Madam!” she cried and her voice was joyful. ” I knew you’d come tonight.”

” Gilly, you know who this is.” What had made me say such a foolish thing?

She nodded.

” I’m going to light your candle,” I said, and I did so.

Her eyes regarded my face with that blank blue stare, and came to rest on the brooch. I sat on the edge of the bed. I knew that when I had first come in she had thought I was someone else.

She was contented though, which showed the confidence she was beginning to feel in me.

I touched the brooch and said: ” Once it was Mrs. TreMellyn’s.”

She smiled and nodded.

I said : ” You spoke when I came in. Why do you not speak to me now?”

She merely smiled.

” Gilly,” I said, ” were you at the peep in the solarium tonight? Were you watching the dancers?”

She nodded.

” Gilly, say Yes.”

” ” Yes,” said Gilly.

” You were up there all alone? You weren’t afraid?”

She shook her head and smiled.

” You mean no, don’t you, Gilly? Say no.”

” ” No. “

” Why weren’t you afraid?”

She opened her mouth and smiled. Then she said: “Not afraid because .”

” Because?” I said eagerly.

“Because,” she repeated.

” Gilly,” I said. ” Were you alone up there?”

She smiled and I could get her to say no more.

After a while I kissed her and she returned my kiss. She was fond of me, I knew. I believed that in her mind she confused me with someone else, and I knew who that person was.

Back in my room I did not want to take off my dress. I felt that as long as I wore it, I could still hope for what I knew to be impossible.

So I sat by my window for an hour or so. It was a warm night and I was comfortable with my silk shawl about me.

I heard some of the guests coming out to their carriages. I heard the exchange of goodbyes.

And while I was there I heard Lady Treslyn’s voice. Her voice was low and vibrant, but she spoke with such intensity that I caught every syllable and I knew to whom she was speaking.

She said: ” Connan, it can’t be long now. It won’t be long-Next morning when Kitty brought my water, she did not come alone. Daisy was with her. I heard their raucous voices mingling and, in my half-waking state, thought they sounded like the gulls.

” Morning, Miss.”

They wanted me to wake up quickly; they had exciting news. I saw that in their faces.

“Miss …” they were both speaking together, both determined to be the one to impart the startling information, “last night … or rather this morning …”

Then Kitty rushed on ahead of her sister: ” Sir Thomas Treslyn was taken bad on the way home. He was dead when they got to Treslyn Hall.”

I sat up in bed, looking from one excited face to the other. One of the guests . dead! I was shocked. But this was no ordinary death, no ordinary death.

I realised, no less than Kitty and Daisy, what such news could mean to Mount Mellyn.

Sir Thomas Treslyn was buried on New Year’s Day.

During the preceding week gloom had settled on the house, and it was all the more noticeable because it followed on the heels of the Christmas festivities. All the decorations had been left about the house, and there was divided opinion as to which was the more unlucky—to remove them before Twelfth Night or to leave them up and thereby show lack of respect.

They all appeared to consider that the death touched us closely. He had died between our house and his own; our table was the last at which he had sat. I realised that the Cornish were a very superstitious people, constantly on the alert for omens, eager to placate supernatural and malignant powers.

Connan was absentminded. I saw little of him, but when I did he seemed scarcely aware of my presence. I imagined he was considering all that this meant to him. If he and Lady Treslyn had been lovers there was no obstacle now to their regula rising their union. I knew that this thought was in the minds of many, but no one spoke of it. I guessed that Mrs. Polgrey would consider it unlucky to do so until Sir Thomas had been buried for some weeks.

Mrs. Polgrey called me to her room and we had a cup of Earl Grey laced with a spoonful of the whisky I had given her.

” This is a shocking thing,” she said. ” Sir Thomas to die on Christmas Day as he did. Although ‘tweren’t Christmas Day but Boxing Day morning,” she added in a. slightly relieved tone, as though this made the situation a little less shocking. ” And to think,” she went on, reverting to her original gloom, ” that ours was the last house he rested in, my food was the last that passed his lips! The funeral is a bit soon, do you. not think, Miss?”

I began to count the days on my fingers. ” Seven days,” I said.

” They could have kept him longer, seeing it’s winter.”

” I suppose they feel that the sooner it’s over the sooner they’ll recover from the shock.”

She herself looked shocked indeed. I think she thought it was disrespectful or unlucky to suggest that anyone would want to recover quickly from their grief.

” I don’t know,” she said, ” you hear tales of people being buried alive. I remember years ago, when I was a child, there was a smallpox epidemic. People panicked and buried quick. It was said that some was buried alive.”

” There is surely no doubt that Sir Thomas is dead.”

” Some seem dead and are not dead, after all. Still seven days should be long enough to tell. You’ll come to the funeral with me, Miss?”