"Twenty minutes! By Jove, she must be more interesting than we thought," says Mr. Darling, "if you can put it at that time. I thought she was going to eat you, she looked so pleased with you. And no wonder, too:" with a loud and a hearty sigh.
"She was very nice to me," says Mona, "and is, I think, a very pleasant old lady. She asked me to go and see her next Thursday."
"Bless my stars!" says Nolly; "you have been going it. That is the day on which she will receive no one but her chief pets. The duchess, when she comes down here, reverses the order of things. The rest have an 'at home' day. She has a 'not at home' day."
"Where are people when they are not at home?" asks Mona, simply.
"That's the eighth wonder of the world," says Mr. Darling, mysteriously. "It has never yet been discovered. Don't seek to pry too closely into it; you might meet with a rebuff."
"How sad Nicholas looks!" says Mona, suddenly.
In a doorway, somewhat out of the crush, Sir Nicholas is standing. His eyes are fixed on Dorothy, who is laughing with a gay and gallant plunger in the distance. He is looking depressed and melancholy; a shadow seems to have fallen into his dark eyes.
"Now he is thinking of that horrid lawsuit again," says Nolly, regretfully, who is a really good sort all round. "Let us go to him."
"Yes; let me go to him," says Mona, quickly; "I shall know what to say better than you."
After a little time she succeeds in partially lifting the cloud that has fallen on her brother. He has grown strangely fond of her, and finds comfort in her gentle eyes and sympathetic mouth. Like all the rest, he has gone down before Mona, and found a place for her in his heart. He is laughing at some merry absurdity of hers, and is feeling braver, more hopeful, when a little chill seems to pass over him, and, turning, he confronts a tall dark young man who has come leisurely—but with a purpose—to where he and Mona are standing.