he hasn't or you would have met him. He went into the drawing-room an hour ago when Loder came in here. The sooner we go and rescue him the better, young lady, or there may be another misunderstanding in that quarter: there is not much love lost between him and your mother, I'm afraid."

"And mother is so very easily-misunderstood," said Betty, making a comical little moue. "She is always so hard on Graham," she added rather sorrowfully, "and I am sure I don't quite know why she should be."

"Ah, well, no, perhaps not," and Lord Leuchars spoke a little dubiously; then seeing that Betty's face fell, he playfully took her hand, and tucking it under his arm, said in a cheery voice, "Come along, little daughter. We will go in and support each other as in the old days."

It was a reminiscence of Betty's nursery career, when every little peccadillo had been confessed in her father's ear, and he, having duly sealed his forgiveness with his lips, had undertaken to act as mediator with that rather rigid disciplinarian, Lady Leuchars.

So those two, arm in arm, threaded their way through the long passages that led to the drawing-room at quite the other end of the house.

9

CHAPTER II.

IN THE DRAWING-ROOM.

THERE was something about the appearance of the couple whom Lord Leuchars and his daughter found sitting at tea in the drawing-room which might have suggested even to an uninitiated spectator that neither of them had found each other's companionship entirely congenial. And the uncontrollable look of relief which came over the young man's face as he ran to greet the new-comers at once enlisted the girl's sympathy on his behalf.

"Well, Graham," she said as they shook hands, "I hope that my mother has been doing the honours of the tea-table nicely."

"Oh yes, thank you. Lady Leuchars has been most―ehkind."

"And conversational too, I hope? I wonder what you two have been talking about," and Betty proceeded to pour out tea for her father and herself. "There you are, my dear," as she handed him his tea; "two lumps of sugar and all,-sweets to the sweet, you know."

"Don't be ridiculous, Betty!" exclaimed Lady Leuchars, who intensely disliked the open love-making that went on between her husband and daughter. "I have just been telling Mr Loder," she continued in her rather high-pitched tones, "that I cannot understand how it is that in the present very

ominous state of foreign affairs our War Office should allow young men to be away from their regiments on these perpetual leaves."

"My dear mother!" exclaimed Betty, glancing merrily at her father as she spoke, "what a deliciously ingenuous way of telling a man that you wished he was somewhere else. I hope you appreciated the compliment, Graham; but I'm afraid you must have been boring my mother dreadfully: I only hope that she has not been boring you too. How very lucky that we two came in before they took to throwing the cups. and saucers about, isn't it?" and she appealed to her father, who, having no remark ready, only muttered to himself something about Apollo and a bow. So Betty again took up the running on her own account.

"Is the state of foreign affairs more ominous than usual, mother?" she inquired.

"If you took the trouble to read the papers, Betty, you would know," was the majestic answer. Really I am not going to take the trouble to instruct your ignorance."

Ah, well! where ignorance is bliss, you know," sighed Betty. "Have some more tea-cake, Graham," helping herself as she spoke.

"You might at least have known," resumed Lady Leuchars, who as Ruling Dame of the local Primrose habitation rather enjoyed the occasional opportunities of displaying her oratorical powers on a platform, "that the Russian armies are gathering year after year nearer the Afghan frontier, that France has long been burning--"

"Oh, bother, just like the tea-cake," interrupted Betty. "Give me an underneath piece, please, Graham. Yes, mother, France has long been burning"

But the invitation to continue the lecture passed unheeded. The thread of a political discourse once broken off is not easily picked up again, as more practised orators than Lady Leuchars have times galore found to their cost, so that her ladyship was well advised in now basing a

fresh attack upon her rather inconvenient daughter on hygienic grounds.

"How can you go on eating all that unwholesome tea-cake, Betty! You will completely spoil your appetite for dinner." "Don't like mutton, do like tea-cake," responded Betty, so exactly mimicking the tones of a spoilt child that her father nearly choked in an unsuccessful attempt to conceal his amusement; "besides, mother dear, I am hungry now, and there is no knowing what I might be at eight o'clock."

"You certainly are not likely to have a healthy appetite then."

"Perhaps I shall have an unhealthy one," laughed Betty. "It seems to me that if healthy appetite means mutton, and unhealthy means tea-cake, I vastly prefer the latter, like the old gentleman in 'Pickwick.' You remember the story, Graham, don't you?"

Graham shook his head.

"No, what was it?" he asked; but Lady Leuchars effectually stopped the impending narration by turning her back on Betty and directly addressing the young man.

"I consider that the digestion, or I should say the abuse of the digestion, is the seat of all human maladies; don't you, Mr Loder?"

Lady Leuchars could not have devised a more expeditious method of getting rid of her visitor than by thus inviting his opinion. In the course of an unfortunately lengthy tête-à-tête with his hostess he had listened with much outward patience, though inward weariness, to a long diatribe on the shortcomings and general decadence of the young men of the present day, more particularly the young men in the army, and, most particularly of all, the young men in what Lady Leuchars had been at pains to describe as the ornamental and therefore wholly useless portion of the army, by which she meant to imply the Household Brigade as a body, and inferentially the young man, Graham Loder, as an individual member of that body. But however cordially he had welcomed the introduc

tion of a less directly personal or less subjective form of discussion, he was by no means prepared to accept the conversational olive-branch thus abruptly held out to him, or to give his opinion on the digestive organs either of mankind in general or of any member of the present company.

Upon my honour, Lady Leuchars," he said, rising from his chair as he spoke, "I don't know anything about it. I am very stupid about all those things. I-well, yes I eat when I am hungry, and I hope I don't eat when I am not hungry, and I expect that most men do the same, and I do not trouble the doctor much, so that I hope my digestion is all right. But, do you know, I really must be saying good-bye. I have been here an unconscionable time already, but I was expecting my father every minute, and now I suppose that he has gone home without me. Has he gone home?" and he appealed to Lord Leuchars.

"Well, yes, I fancy that he has," answered Lord Leuchars, exchanging glances with Betty; "at least he went to the stables to get his horse, so that he must have gone home."

"Well, then, I had better follow him. Good night, Lady Leuchars. I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I go back to duty to-morrow, and that they are not likely to give me any more leave for a long time to come. Good night, Betty. Oh," to Lord Leuchars, who was manifesting an intention of accompanying his guest out of the room, "don't you bother to come. I can find my way all right."

"I want to come that way, if you don't mind," said Lord Leuchars briefly, and then as soon as they were outside the room he went on, "The fact of the matter is, Graham, that your father went off in a hurry because he was not very much pleased with something I said to him.”

"Went off in a huff as well as in a hurry, eh?" said Graham, smiling; "well, I am afraid that I have known him do that before."

"So have I, but-hem-well, Graham, I am afraid this is rather more serious than usual. I know that you have plenty