Yet in his face and in his bearing he could not have shown much of it, though at his deeply sun-burned temples the thick, close-cut hair was silvery; for Austin said with amused and at the same time fretful emphasis:  “How the devil you keep the youth” in your face and figure I don’t understand!  I’m only forty-five—­that’s scarcely eight years older than you are!  And look at my waistcoat!  And look at my hair—­I mean where the confounded ebb has left the tide-mark!  Gad, I’d scarcely blame Eileen for thinking you qualified for a cradle-snatcher. . . .  And, by the way, that Gladys girl is more of a woman than you’d believe.  I observe that Gerald wears that peculiarly speak-easy-please expression which is a healthy sign that he’s being managed right from the beginning.”

“I had an idea she was all right,” said Selwyn, smiling.

“Well, she is.  People will probably say that she ‘made’ Gerald.  However,” added Austin modestly, “I shall never deny it—­though you know what part I’ve had in the making and breaking of him, don’t you?”

“Yes,” replied Selwyn, without a smile.

Austin went to the telephone and called up his house at Silverside, saying that he’d be down that evening with a guest.

Nina got the message just as she had arranged her tables; but woman is born to sorrow and heiress to all the unlooked-for idiocies of man.

“Dear,” she said to Eileen, the tears of uxorial vexation drying unshed in her pretty eyes, “Austin has thought fit to seize upon this moment to bring a man down to dinner.  So if you are dressed would you kindly see that the tables are rearranged, and then telephone somebody to fill in—­two girls, you know.  The oldest Craig girl might do for one.  Beg her mother to let her come.”

Eileen was being laced, but she walked to the door of Nina’s room, followed by her little Alsatian maid, who deftly continued her offices en route.

“Whom is Austin bringing?” she asked.

“He didn’t say.  Can’t you think of a second girl to get?  Isn’t it vexing!  Of course there’s nobody left—­nobody ever fills in in the country. . . .  Do you know, I’ll be driven into letting Drina sit up with us!—­for sheer lack of material.  I suppose the little imp will have a fit if I suggest it, and probably perish of indigestion to-morrow.”

Eileen laughed.  “Oh, Nina, do let Drina come this once!  It can’t hurt her—­she’ll look so quaint.  The child’s nearly fifteen, you know; do let me put up her hair.  Boots will take her in.”

“Well, you and Austin can administer the calomel to-morrow, then. . . .  And do ring up Daisy Craig; tell her mother I’m desperate, and that she and Drina can occupy the same hospital to-morrow.”

And so it happened that among the jolly youthful throng which clustered around the little candle-lighted tables in the dining-room at Silverside, Drina, in ecstasy, curly hair just above the nape of her slim white neck, and cheeks like pink fire, sat between Boots and a vacant chair reserved for her tardy father.