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young to be his wife and the mother of a year-old son. She met his eyes in the mirror, and by his slight frown she knew that he was entertaining similar thoughts. She smiled at him, and after a moment he smiled slowly back.
    Besides Mr. Graves, the elderly gentleman who owned the plantation nearest Woodham, there were his wife, Ruth, and daughter, Millicent, awaitingthem in the reception room. Cathy was fond of both Mr. and Mrs. Graves, who had gone out of their way to make the Hales welcome to the area, but Millicent was something else again. Nearly thirty, and extremely plain, she had never married. She dressed as befitted a very young girl, and simpered endlessly in her desire to appear youthful. But what really rankled with Cathy was that Millicent never let an opportunity pass to make sheep’s eyes at Jon. Jon, to his credit, blandly ignored the whole thing.
    As Cathy turned from greeting these first guests, the remainder of the company began to arrive. In short order the room was filled with chattering people. Cathy and Jon separated, circulating and exchanging light small talk with the new arrivals. Cathy, watching Jon laughing politely over a matron’s description of her daughter’s many suitors, felt a rush of love for him.
    Dinner passed smoothly, although Cathy was hard put to it not to laugh when Mr. Graves, true to Jon’s predictions, spilled his soup all over his frilled white shirt. Cathy caught Jon’s eye, saw his lips twitching humorously, and looked hurriedly away, biting her lip. For the next few minutes she concentrated her attention on Gerald Bates, a contemporary of Jon’s who sat on her left hand. By the time she was once again free to turn to Mr. Graves, the urge to laugh had passed.
    After dinner, the ladies left the gentlemen to enjoy their cigars and brandy in peace while they retired to the drawing room to sip tea and gossip. It was some half-hour later before the gentlemen rejoined them. As they strolled into the room it was immediately apparent that they had drunk more than was considered proper. Gerald Bates was laughing just a touch too loudly, while some of the other gentlemen were very red of face. Jon was smilingly urbane as always. Cathy marveled, as she sometimes did, at his apparent capacity for drink. The only time she had ever seen him the worse for it was after Cray’s birth, and even then, according to Petersham, Jon had consumed enough straight whiskeyto fell a team of horses before showing it.
    Cathy threw a reproving look at Jon, blaming him silently for letting their male guests get in such a state. He intercepted it and correctly deciphered its meaning, looking so penitent that Cathy had to smile in spite of herself. He rewarded her softening with a lopsided smile of his own that he knew from experience she found hard to resist. When she still eyed him severely, he made as if to come toward her.
    “Won’t you play for us, Lady Cathy?” Gerald Bates’ overloud voice forestalled him. Cathy wanted to decline, but could think of no reasonable excuse for doing so. Instead, smiling at her guests’ polite urgings, she crossed to the small grand piano situated in one corner of the room, and seated herself without fanfare on the padded bench.
    “What would you like to hear?” Cathy turned her head to smile at the assembled company. When they assured her that anything she cared to play could not fail to delight them, Cathy launched into the lilting strains of a waltz. Gerald Bates came to lean over the side of the instrument, watching her with poorly concealed pleasure. As she felt his eyes caressing the white flesh exposed by her gown, she began to wish fervently that he would go away. If he kept up his disgraceful perusal, there was bound to be trouble. Jon was fiercely possessive of everything he considered his property, and in his estimation Cathy was just that. If he was aware of it—as how could he not be?—he would not at all like the way Gerald was eyeing her. And