Chapter 1

It was a soft starlit night mystically changing into dawn when Donal
Muir left the tall, grave house on Eaton Square after the strangely
enchanted dance given by the old Dowager Duchess of Darte. A certain
impellingness of mood suggested that exercise would be a good thing and
he decided to walk home. It was an impellingness of body as well as
mind. He had remained later than the relative who had by chance been
responsible for his being brought, an uninvited guest, to the party. The
Duchess had not known that he was in London. It may also be accepted as
a fact that to this festivity given for the pleasure of Mrs.
Gareth-Lawless' daughter, she might not have chosen to assume the
responsibility of extending him an invitation. She knew something of his
mother and had sometimes discussed her with her old friend, Lord Coombe.
She admired Helen Muir greatly and was also much touched by certain
aspects of her maternity. What Lord Coombe had told her of the meeting
of the two children in the Gardens, of their innocent child passion of
attraction for each other, and of the unchildlike tragedy their enforced
parting had obviously been to both had at once deeply interested and
moved her. Coombe had only been able to relate certain surface incidents
connected with the matter, but they had been incidents not easy to
forget and from which unusual things might be deduced. No! She would
not have felt prepared to be the first to deliberately throw these two
young people across each other's paths at this glowing moment of their
early blooming--knowing as she did Helen Muir's strongly anxious desire
to keep them apart.

She had seen Donal Muir several times as the years had passed and had
not been blind to the physical beauty and allure of charm the rest of
the world saw and proclaimed with suitable adjectives. When the intimate
friend who was his relative appeared with him in her drawing-room and
she found standing before her, respectfully appealing for welcome with a
delightful smile, this quite incomparably good-looking young man, she
was conscious of a secret momentary disturbance and a recognition of the
fact that something a shade startling had happened.

"When a thing of the sort occurs entirely without one's aid and rather
against one's will--one may as well submit," she said later to Lord
Coombe. "Endeavouring to readjust matters is merely meddling with Fate
and always ends in disaster. As an incident, I felt there was a hint in
it that it would be the part of wisdom to leave things alone."

She had watched the two dancing with a kind of absorption in her gaze.
She had seen them go out of the room into the conservatory. She had
known exactly when they had returned and, seeing the look on their