“Please find the carriage,” she said. And then there was a murmur—Lady Haredale desiring Amethyst to stay, she would take Una home, Kattern should go and help her,—Amethyst must not lose her ball.
“No, mother—I shall go with Una,” said Amethyst, “I could not stay, when she is ill.”
Major Fowler reappeared, having caught an arriving carriage, and Sir Richard offered to carry Una; but she struggled to her feet, clinging to her sister, and said that she could walk now.
He walked by her side, helping her, and Sylvester found their cloaks, and, as he brought them to the foot of the stairs, caught a murmur of “sweetest sisterly affection,” and “But you have answered me!”
“No—Sir Richard, I have not,” said Amethyst, provoked at being urged at such a moment; and, while she spoke, her eyes looked out at the door, as Oliver Carisbrooke came in from the darkness without.
He went swiftly up to the group approaching him.
“I knew,” he said to Amethyst in a low voice, “I knew this night would bring you trouble.”
How it was, Sylvester never knew, but somehow it was the new-comer who took the first place, and helped them into the carriage, though Sir Richard, as in duty bound, sprang up on to the box—“to see them home.”
Sylvester walked slowly up-stairs, and back to the balcony. There, on the floor, lay Amethyst’s long pink glove, which she had pulled off while waiting on Una.
Sylvester picked it up, and held it reverently in his hand.