"Oh! don't say that word 'Rejoice.' How it reminds me of you. It ought to belong to you. It does. You should have been called 'Rejoice' instead of 'Joyce'; they have cut off half your name. To see you is to feel new life within one's veins." "Ah! I said you didn't know me," returns she sadly. * * * * * Meantime the hours have flown; evening is descending. It is all very well for those who, traveling up and down romantic hills, can find engrossing matters for conversation in their idle imaginings of love, or their earnest belief therein, but to the ordinary ones of the earth, mundane comforts are still of some worth. Tea, the all powerful, is now holding high revelry in the library at the Court. Round the cosy tables, growing genial beneath the steam of the many old Queen Anne "pots," the guests are sitting singly or in groups. "What delicious little cakes!" says Lady Swansdown, taking up a smoking morsel of cooked butter and flour from the glowing tripod beside her. "You like them?" says Lady Baltimore in her slow, earnest way. "So does Joyce. She thinks they are the nicest cakes in the world. By the by, where is Joyce?" "She went out for a walk at twenty minutes after two," says Beauclerk. He has pulled out his watch and is steadily consulting it. "And it is now twenty minutes after five," says Lady Swansdown, maliciously, who detests Beauclerk and who has read his relations with Joyce as clear as a book. "How she must have enjoyed herself!" "Yes; but where?" says Lady Baltimore anxiously. Joyce has been left in her charge, and, apart from that, she likes the girl well enough, to be uneasy about her when occasion arises. "With whom would be a more appropriate question," says Dicky Browne, who, as usual, is just where he ought not to be. "Oh, I know where she is," cries a little, shrill voice from the background. It comes from Tommy, and from that part of the room where Tommy and Mabel and little Bertie are having a game behind the window curtains. Blocks, dolls, kitchens, farm yards, ninepins--all have been given to them as a means of keeping them quiet. One thing only has been forgotten: the fact that the human voice divine is more attractive to them, more replete with delightful mystery, fuller of enthralling possibilities than all the toys that ever yet were made. "Thomas, are you fully alive to the responsibilities to which you pledge yourself?" demands Mr. Browne severely. "What?" says Tommy. "Do you pledge yourself to declare where Miss Kavanagh is now?" "Is it Joyce?" says Tommy, coming forward and standing undaunted in his knickerbockers and an immaculate collar that defies suspicion. "Yes--Joyce," says Mr. Browne, who never can hold his tongue.