"Jabez!" Barton jumped up with the alacrity of a man half his age. "Gerald! John! go into the drawing-room and entertain the ladies. I shall be engaged for the next half-hour in the library." And he vanished with the plethoric butler. "Hullo! What's up with Uncle B.?" said Gerald. Dundas shrugged his shoulders. "One of his mysterious interviews, I suppose. He is a mystery in himself is Uncle Barton." CHAPTER V. BEHIND THE SCENES. In the drawing-room, Mrs. Darrow, feeling it incumbent upon her to provide entertainment for those assembled, decided she could not do better than relate to them the history of her married life--how good and devoted she had been to a brutal husband, how she had been unable to buy a rag of clothing for quite six months at a time, and consequently had been obliged to go unfashionably clothed. How she could have married at least a dozen men who were dying for her. But how foolishly she had chosen the only one who never appreciated her, and much more to the same effect. Such a theme she held, more especially when adequately set forth and expatiated upon, must be all absorbing. Hilda, it was true, had heard a vastly different version of her friend's connubial existence. She knew, in fact, that the late Mr. Darrow had been something more than glad to leave this sphere. But for the present that mattered not at all. Mrs. Darrow told her tale, and told it very well, and although neither of her audience was in the least degree convinced by it, undoubtedly many people would have been. Right in the midst of a sentimental outburst, in which she was declaring how now she lived solely for the sake of her darling child, being otherwise quite prepared to join the late Mr. Darrow in Heaven, the two young men entered. "Already!"--the good lady was in no wise disconcerted at having thus abruptly to strike another note.--"Ah! our company is more attractive then than your wine and cigars?" "Can you doubt it?" said Gerald, making his way over towards Hilda. Thus deserted, Mrs. Darrow captured the Major, who, too polite to evade her, forthwith buckled to, and did his best to fall in with her very obvious desire for conversation, if not for controversy. Miriam, without a cavalier was thus left to her own devices. She scanned a photograph album which was at her hand. "Where is Uncle Barton?" asked Mrs. Darrow. "He should be here, if only to entertain dear Miss Crane." "I don't wish to be entertained, thank you," said Miriam, noting the petty spite. "I think if you don't mind I'll take a walk in the fresh air, it is so close here," she said, and, without waiting for approval or otherwise from Mrs. Darrow, she stepped through the French window which opened on to the terrace. "Well, I'm sure!" ejaculated the widow. "What coolness! Don't go, John, I have so much to say to you." "But doesn't it seem rather unkind to leave Miss Crane alone?" said the Major, who was already somewhat under the spell of Miriam's beauty.