"Ah!" sighed Mrs. Reade, laying her parasol across her knees, and folding her hands resignedly. "Why do you say 'ah,' Beatrice, before you hear what I am going to tell you? There was a man there whom Mr. Kingston disliked very much. He gave himself airs, and they somehow came into collision, and Mr. Kingston was in rather a bad temper. That was all that went wrong before the ball, and Rachel had nothing to do with that." "Do you think so? I am certain she had," the young lady replied deliberately. "Well, if you think you know better than I do, who was there to see----" "Go on, dear mamma. Tell me all about him. Who was he? What was he like?" Mrs. Hardy, pocketing her dignity, proceeded to describe Mr. Dalrymple, with great amplitude of detail, as he had appeared from her point of view. The result was a kind of superior Newgate villian, of good birth and distinguished presence, whom Mrs. Reade regarded with a sinking heart. "Oh, dear me!" she sighed, blankly, "what a pity! What a grevious pity!" "I _can't_ see why you should look at it in this way, Beatrice. I tell you she had little or nothing to say to him, and she only danced with him once the whole evening. I took care to point out to her the kind of man he was, and to warn her against him." "You ought not to have done that." "My dear, you will allow me to be the best judge of what I ought to do. She was very good and obedient, and she acted in every way as I wished her." "But she liked him, didn't she?" asked Mrs. Reade. "Yes," Mrs. Hardy admitted, with evident reluctance, "I am afraid she did like him." "I am sure she did," said Mrs. Reade, decisively. "And there is more than liking in the matter, unless I am much mistaken. I have never been in love myself," she remarked frankly, "but I fancy I know the symptoms when I see them. I feared from the first that it was something of that sort that was the matter with her. At any rate--" putting up her hand to stay the imminent protest on her mother's lips--"at any rate, if he has not made her love him, he has made her discontented with Mr. Kingston." "Well, Beatrice," the elder woman exclaimed, with an impatient sigh, rising from her chair, "if such a thing should be--if such a misfortune should have happened after all my care--we must only do the best we can to mend it. Thank goodness he's gone. He is not at all likely to give her another thought. If he does--" Mrs. Hardy shut her mouth significantly, and her Roman nostrils dilated. "You can't help his thinking what he likes," said Mrs. Reade, with a gleam of mockery in her bright eyes. "I can help his doing anything further to disturb her. I can see that he never meets or speaks to her again." Mrs. Reade continued to smile, looking at her majestic mother with her bird-like head on one side. "I hope so," she said. "I'm sure I hope so, if you can do it without her knowledge. But if you should have to act, whatever you do, don't make martyrs of them."