"But if not he——"
"Barbara!" says Joyce sharply. "Was it not enough that you should have made one mistake? Must you insist on making another?"
"Well, never mind," says Mrs. Monkton hastily. "I'm glad I made that one, at all events; and I'm only sorry you have felt it your duty to make your pretty eyes wet about it Good gracious!" looking put of the window, "who is coming now? Dicky Browne and Mr. Courtenay and those detestable Blakes. Tommy," turning sharply to her first-born. "If you and Mabel stay here you must be good. Do you hear now, good! You are not to ask a single question or touch a thing in the room, and you are to keep Mabel quiet. I am not going to have Mrs. Blake go home and say you are the worst behaved children she ever met in her life. You will stay, Joyce?" anxiously to her sister.
"Oh, I suppose so. I couldn't leave you to endure their tender mercies alone."
"That's a darling girl! You know I never can get on with that odious woman. Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Blake? How sweet of you to come after last night's fatigue."
"Well, I think a drive a capital thing after being up all night," says the new-comer, a fat, little, ill-natured woman, nestling herself into the cosiest chair in the room. "I hadn't quite meant to come here, but I met Mr. Browne and Mr. Courtenay, so I thought we might as well join forces, and storm you in good earnest. Mr. Browne has just been telling me that Lady Swansdown left the Court this morning. Got a telegram, she said, summoning her to Gloucestershire. Never do believe in these sudden telegrams myself. Stayed rather long in that anteroom with Lord Baltimore last night."
"Didn't know she had been in any anteroom," says Mrs. Monkton, coldly. "I daresay her mother-in-law is ill again. She has always been attentive to her."
"Not on terms with her son, you know; so Lady Swansdown hopes, by the attention you speak of, to come in for the old lady's private fortune. Very considerable fortune, I've heard."
"Who told you?" asks Mr. Browne, with a cruelly lively curiosity. "Lady Swansdown?"
"Oh, dear no!"