She looked up with a pleasant smile and greeting; but before they could move on across the ample drive, Mr.Frobisher overtook them.
"Won't you take my arm ?" he said, in a low voice.
Miss Vincent slipped her hand inside his arm, and rested on him.

He supported her with what seemed to Diana a tender carefulness, his head bent to hers, while he talked and she replied.
Diana followed, her girl's heart kindling.
"Surely!--surely!--they are in love ?--engaged ?" But no one else appeared to take any notice or made any remark.
Long did the memory of the evening which followed live warm in the heart of Diana.

It was to her an evening of triumph--triumph innocent, harmless, and complete.

Her charm, her personality had by now captured the whole party, save for an opposition of three--and the three realized that they had for the moment no chance of influencing the popular voice.
The rugged face of Mr.Barton stiffened as she approached; it seemed to him that the night before he had been snubbed by a chit, and he was not the man to forget it easily.

Alicia Drake was a little pale and a little silent during the evening, till, late in its course, she succeeded in carrying off a group of young men who had come for the shoot and were staying the night, and in establishing a noisy court among them Mrs.
Fotheringham disapproved, by now, of almost everything that concerned Miss Mallory: of her taste in music or in books, of the touch of effusion in her manner, which was of course "affected" or "aristocratic"; of the enthusiasms she did _not_ possess, no less than of those She did.