Lady Betty's face was piteous. "If you do, I--I shall be sent into the country," she panted. "I--I don't know what they'll do to me. Oh, please, please, will you give it me!"
Sophia had a kindly nature, and the girl's distress appealed to her. But it appealed in two ways.
"No, I shall not give it you," she answered firmly. "But I shall not tell your mother, either. I shall tear it up. You are too young, you little baby, to do this!" And suiting the action to the word, she tore the note into a dozen pieces and dropped them.
Lady Betty glared at her between relief and rage. At last "Cat! Cat!" she whispered with childish spite. "Thank you for nothing, ma'am. I'll pay you by-and-by, see if I don't!" And with a spring, she was back at the front of the box, her laugh the loudest, her voice the freshest, her wit the boldest and most impertinent of all. Sophia, who fancied that she had made an enemy, did not notice that more than once this madcap looked her way; nor that in the midst of the wildest outbursts she had an eye for what happened in her direction.
Sophia, indeed, had food for thought more important than Lady Betty, for the girl had scarcely left her side when Mrs. Northey came to her, shook her roughly by the shoulder--they had direct ways in those days--and asked her in a fierce whisper if she were going to sulk there all the evening. Thus adjured, Sophia moved reluctantly to a front seat at the right-hand corner of the box. Lord P---- had been suppressed, but broken knots of people still lingered before the garden of the box expecting a new escapade. To the right, in the open, fireworks were being let off, and the grounds in that direction were as light as in the day. Suddenly, Sophia's eyes, roving moodily hither and thither, became fixed. She rose to her feet with a cry of surprise, which must have been heard by her companions had they not been taken up at that moment with the arrest of a cutpurse by two thief-takers, a drama which was going forward on the left.
"There's--there's Tom!" she cried, her astonishment extreme, since Tom should have been at Cambridge. And raising her voice she shouted "Tom! Tom!"
Her brother did not hear. He was moving across the open lighted space, some fifteen paces from the box; a handsome boy, foppishly dressed, moving with the affected indifference of a very young dandy. Sophia glanced round in an agony of impatience, and found that no one was paying any attention to her; there was no one she could send to call him. She saw that in a twinkling he would be lost in the crowd, and, acting on the impulse of the moment, she darted to the stairs, which were only two paces from her, and flew down them to overtake him. Unfortunately, she tripped at the bottom and almost fell, lost a precious instant, and lost Tom. When she reached the spot where she had last seen him, and looked round, her brother was not to be seen.
Or yes, there he was, in the act of vanishing down one of the dim alleys that led into the grove. Half laughing, half crying, innocently anticipating his surprise when he should see her, Sophia sped after him. He turned a corner--the place was a maze and dimly lighted--she followed him; she thought he met some one, she hurried on, and the next moment was all but in the arms of Hawkesworth.
"Sophia!" the Irishman cried, pressing his hat to his heart as he bowed before her. "Oh, my angel, that I should be so blest! This is indeed a happy meeting."
But she was far at the moment from thinking of him. Her brother occupied her whole mind. "Where is he," she cried, looking every way. "Where is Tom? Mr. Hawkesworth, you must have seen him. He must have passed you."