"Just so, my lady," composedly, and with another deep curtsey. Lady Baltimore having given Mrs. Connolly into the care of the housekeeper, who is an old friend of hers, leads Joyce upstairs. "You are not angry with me?" says Joyce, turning on the threshold of her room. "With you, my dear child? No, indeed. With Norman, very! He should have turned back the moment he saw the first symptom of a storm. A short wetting would have done neither of you any harm." "There was no warning; the storm was on us almost immediately, and we were then very close to Falling." "Then, having placed you once safely in Mrs. Connolly's care, he should have returned himself, at all hazards." "It rained very hard," says Joyce in a cold, clear tone. Her eyes are on the ground. She is compelling herself to be strictly just to Beauclerk, but the effort is too much for her. She fails to do it naturally, and so gives a false impression to her listener. Lady Baltimore casts a quick glance at her. "Rain, what is rain?" says she. "There was storm, too, a violent storm; you must have felt it here." "No storm should have prevented his return. He should have thought only of you." A little bitter smile curls the girl's lips: it seems a farce to suggest that he should have thought of her. He! Now with her eyes effectually opened, a certain scorn of herself, in that he should have been able so easily to close them, takes possession of her. Is his sister blind still to his defects, that she expects so much from him; has she not read him rightly yet? Has she yet to learn that he will never consider any one, where his own interests, comforts, position, clash with theirs? "You look distressed, tired. I believe you are fretting about this," says Lady Baltimore, with a little kindly bantering laugh. "Don't be a silly child. Nobody has said or thought anything that has not been kindly of you. Did you sleep last night? No. I can see you didn't. There, lie down, and get a little rest before luncheon. I shall send you up a glass of champagne and a biscuit; don't refuse it." She pulls down the blinds, and goes softly out of the room to her boudoir, where she finds Beauclerk awaiting her. He is lounging comfortably on a satin fauteuil, looking the very _beau ideal_ of pleasant, careless life. He makes his sister a present of a beaming smile as she enters. "Ah! good morning, Isabel. I am afraid we gave you rather a fright; but you see it couldn't be helped. What an evening and night it turned out! By Jove! I thought the water works above were turned on for good at last and for ever. We felt like the Babes in the Wood--abandoned, lost. Poor, dear Miss Kavanagh! I felt so sorry for her! You have seen her, I hope," his face has now taken the correct lines of decorous concern. "She is not over fatigued?" "She looks tired! depressed!" says Lady Baltimore, regarding him seriously. "I wish, Norman, you had come home last evening." "What! and bring Miss Kavanagh through all that storm!"