“Things are going up with me, sir, if you mean aeroplanes.”

“Frivolous! Frivolous!” muttered the big man seriously; “as a well-educated young man who wants money, you should aim at higher things.”

“He aims at the sun,” said Lillian gaily, “how much higher do you expect him to aim, Dad?”

“Aiming at the sun is he,” said Moon heavily; “h’m! he’ll be like that classical chap, who flew too high and came smash.”

“Do you mean Icarus or Phaeton, Sir Charles?” asked Mrs. Bolstreath, who, having been a governess, prided herself upon exceptional knowledge.

“I don’t know which of the two; perhaps one, perhaps both. But he flew in an aeroplane like Dan here, and came to grief.”

“Oh!” Lillian turned distinctly pale. “I hope, Dan, you won’t come to grief.”

Before the guest could reply, Sir Charles reassured his daughter. “Naught was never in danger,” he said, still grim and unsmiling, “don’t trouble, Lillian, my dear. Dan won’t come to grief in that way, although he may in another.”

Lillian opened her blue eyes and stared while young Halliday grew crimson and fiddled with the nutshells. “I don’t know what you mean, Dad?” said the girl after a puzzled pause.

“I think Dan does,” rejoined her father, rising and pushing back his chair slowly. He looked at his watch. “Seven-thirty; you have plenty of time to see your play, which does not begin until nine,” he added, walking towards the door. “Mrs. Bolstreath, I should like to speak with you.”

“But, Dad—”

“My dear Lillian, I have no time to wait. There is an important appointment at nine o’clock here, and afterwards I must go to the House. Go and enjoy yourself, but don’t—” here his stern grey eyes rested on Dan’s bent head in a significant way—“don’t be foolish. Mrs. Bolstreath,” he beckoned, and left the room.

“Oh!” sighed the chaperon-governess-companion, for she was all three, a kind of modern Cerberus, guarding the millionaire’s child. “I thought it would come to this!” and she also looked significantly at Halliday before she vanished to join her employer.

Lillian stared at the closed door through which both her father and Mrs. Bolstreath had passed, and then looked at Dan, sitting somewhat disconsolately at the disordered dinner-table. She was a delicately pretty girl of a fair fragile type, not yet twenty years of age, and resembled a shepherdess of Dresden china in her dainty perfection. With her pale golden hair, and rose-leaf complexion; arrayed in a simple white silk frock with snowy pearls round her slender neck, she looked like a wreath of faint mist. At least Dan fancifully thought so, as he stole a glance at her frail beauty, or perhaps she was more like a silver-point drawing, exquisitely fine. But whatever image love might find to express her loveliness, Dan knew in his hot passion that she was the one girl in the world for him. Lillian Halliday was a much better name for her than Lillian Moon.

Dan himself was tall and slim, dark and virile, with a clear-cut, clean-shaven face suggestive of strength and activity. His bronzed complexion suggested an open-air life, while the eagle look in his dark eyes was that new vast-distance expression rapidly being acquired by those who devote themselves to aviation. No one could deny Dan’s good looks or clean life or daring nature, and he was all that a girl could desire in the way of a fairy prince. But fathers do not approve of fairy princes unless they come laden with jewels and gold. To bring such to Lillian was rather like taking coals to Newcastle since her father was so wealthy; but much desires more, and Sir Charles wanted a rich son-in-law. Dan could not supply this particular adjective, and therefore—as he would have put it in the newest slang of the newest profession—was out of the fly. Not that he intended to be, in spite of Sir Charles, since love can laugh at stern fathers as easily as at bolts and bars.

And all this time Lillian stared at the door, and then at Dan, and then at her plate, putting two and two together. But in spite of her feminine intuition, she could not make four, and turned to her lover—for that Dan was, and a declared lover too—for an explanation. “What does Dad mean?”

Dan raised his handsome head and laughed as grimly as Sir Charles had done earlier.