But in the same moment Joanna took her resolution. Come what might, she would be at Mildred’s at a quarter to eight; and she would be there if possible without having broken the promise to her mother. How this was to be done, she did not yet know. She only knew that a way must be found.

True, this was the first time in her life that she had heard of Louis Pender. And under Nilsson’s influence she was becoming less impressible by Mildred’s celebrities. True, also, the little dancing she knew had been picked up during playhours at school, and she had never been to a dance. But at this moment she could imagine nothing more desirable on earth than that she should meet this man with the pleasant name at dinner, and go to the dance afterwards. She wanted to dance, even should she not have the courage to accept a partner for anything but a reel or a set of lancers, in either of which she felt secure.

She looked again at the letter.

“Also, as an experiment,” wrote Mrs. Lovatt in her slap-dash hand-writing, “I have asked that young Mr. Urquhart whom you may remember in our Italian class. In spite of his appalling shyness, I gather he remembers you. I discovered him to-day having tea at the Tullises’. It seems Professor T. thinks well of him as a budding anthropologist.”

And there was a postscript, telling that Louis Pender was in Glasgow as the possible painter of some panels in the City Chambers, about which there had been some talk of late.

Yes: Joanna was determined to go that evening to Panmure Crescent; but how was it to be done?

Quite apart from the St. Saviour’s complication, she well knew that the dinner could only have been achieved by great skill, and the dance by deceit or open rebellion. In all these things her mother’s will was set hard against her. And there was the particular promise besides!

There was no means she did not now consider, from flagrant lying to wild revolt; from the plea of illness, to the attempted cajolery of Miss Gedge to alter the hour of prayer. But one by one each plan had to be rejected, and again nothing remained but the sheer determination.

Then, sudden and simple, like the unexpected appearance of the sun on a black day, came the solution.

In a fever of excitement she laid her plans. She was triumphant, amazed that she had not thought of this at once. It would involve no more deception than either she or Georgie had perforce practised a hundred times before where their mother was concerned.