"I will take you back to the Lanes, anyway," said Lady Winterbourne; "or shall we look after you?"
"No! no! Take me back to the Lanes."
"Mamma, are you coming?" said a voice like a softened version of Lady Winterbourne's. Then something small and thin ran forward, and a girl's voice said piteously:
"Dear Lady Winterbourne, my frock and my hair take so long to do! I shall be cross with my maid, and look like a fiend. Ermyntrude will be sorry she ever knew me. Do come!"
"Don't cry, Betty. I certainly shan't take you if you do!" said Lady
Ermyntrude, laughing. "Mamma, is this Miss Boyce—your Miss Boyce?"
She and Marcella shook hands, and they talked a little, Lady Ermyntrude under cover of the darkness looking hard and curiously at the tall stranger whom, as it happened, she had never seen before. Marcella had little notion of what she was saying. She was far more conscious of the girlish form hanging on Lady Winterbourne's arm than she was of her own words, of "Betty's" beautiful soft eyes—also shyly and gravely fixed upon herself—under that marvellous cloud of fair hair; the long, pointed chin; the whimsical little face.
"Well, none of you are any good!" said Betty at last, in a tragic voice. "I shall have to walk home my own poor little self, and 'ask a p'leeceman.' Mr. Raeburn!"
He disengaged himself from a group behind and came—with no alacrity.
Betty ran up to him.
"Mr. Raeburn! Ermyntrude and Lady Winterbourne are going to sleep here, if you don't mind making arrangements. But I want a hansom."
At that very moment Marcella caught sight of Edith strolling along towards her with a couple of members, and chatting as though the world had never rolled more evenly.