Owing to his arrival at the Anglo-Américain so much sooner than usual, he finds himself coming in for the ceremony of Sybilla's installation for the day in the drawing-room. There is always a little pomp and fussy bustle about this rite. Sybilla totters in (grave doubts have occasionally crossed the minds of her family as to whether she does not in reality possess a pair of excellent and thoroughly dependable legs), supported on one side by Amelia and on the other by her maid. Cecilia goes before with an air cushion, and Mr. Wilson follows, when he does not turn restive--which is sometimes the case--with a duvet. To-day, as I have said, this rite is in full celebration when Jim arrives, but it is being performed with mutilated glories. The rite is going forward, but the high priest is absent. That ministrant, upon whose arm the sufferer is wont to lean far the most heavily; she upon whom devolves the whole responsibility of arranging the three cushions behind the long limp back; the properly covering the languid feet; the nice administering of the reviving cordial drops that are to repair the fatigue of the transit from bedroom to sitting-room--that most important and unfailing ministrant is nowhere to be seen. No artist wishes his picture to be viewed in an inchoate, unfinished stage, nor is Sybilla at all anxious to have the public admitted to the sight of that eminent work of art herself until she is stretched in faint, moribund, graceful completeness on her day-bed. At the moment of Burgoyne's entry she has just reached that unbecoming point, where she is sitting sideways on her sofa, before her wasted limbs--Burgoyne is one of those heretics who have never believed that they are wasted--have been carefully lifted into their final posture of extension upon the Austrian blanket. It is, of all moments, the one at which interruption is least welcome; nor is the intruder at all surprised at being greeted by the invalid with a more than sub-acid accent. "My dear Jim, _already_! Why you become more _matinale_ every day! you _are_ the early bird indeed! You do not"--with an annoyed laugh--"give us poor worms a chance of being beforehand with you." "I am very sorry if I am too soon," replies he, his eyes wandering away from the fretful features before him in search of others upon which he knows he shall find written no complaint of his prematureness--"but I came to----Where's Amelia?" "You may well ask," replies Sybilla, with a sort of hysterical laugh. "It is pretty evident that she is not _here_! My dear Cis, would you mind remembering that my head is not made of mahogany? you gave it such a bang with that cushion. I am very sorry to trouble you. The heaviest load a sick person has to bear is the feeling that she is such a burden to those around her; and certainly, my dear, you do not help me to forget it."