On the seventeenth day of December, when Darlington, looking a ridiculous object, had boomed away in a new car, of which he was inordinately proud, Rosalind stole guiltily into a news-agent's. She would not meet her lord again for a month. Her beautiful eyes sparkled, and her cheeks were flushed. She tendered two pennies to a vulgar man, smoking a clay pipe behind the counter, and asked for the _Stage_. To the happily constituted there can seem nothing calculated to kindle the emotions in the act of buying a twopenny paper in a squalid shop, but Rosalind had a temperament, and temperaments play queer tricks. (See Conrad's.) The tender grace of a day that was dead hallowed the damp copy of a journal in which she had formerly advertised that she was "Resting;" the touch of vanished hands sent little thrills to her heart as her gaze embraced familiar names. She went back to the drawing-room fire, and read them diligently. Dusk and a footman crept in before she discovered Miss Tattie Lascelles, but that artist's announcement leapt to her with the electric light. Miss Tattie Lascelles informed the kingdom that she was specially engaged to create the part of "Delicia Potts" in the maritime musical farce entitled _Little Miss Kiss-And-Tell_, on Blithepoint Pier. The date chosen for this perfectly unimportant production was Monday, December 22nd. Then Rosalind, who was to go to the Marrables in Leicestershire for Christmas, wrote Lady Marrable a note of grieved excuse, and scribbled a letter to Tattie, which began, "Take two bedrooms in Blithepoint, and don't breathe a word to a soul till you see me." And though the happily constituted may be sceptical again, she felt more joyous than she had done for five illustrious years. Blithepoint is about thirty-three miles by rail from Sweetbay. It is a grey, bleak place, with the plainest female population in England. On three hundred days of the year the wind is due east, but on the other sixty-five it is southeast, and then the residents go about saying what "lovely weather they're having." Blithepoint is much larger than Sweetbay, and more fashionable. It is also nearly as dull. Nobody is aware how much can be spent on being deadly dull until he has stayed in a Blithepoint hotel. Rosalind was a shade uneasy in the thought that someone among the visitors might recognise her; she knew that at Christmas eccentric Londoners occasionally went down there, and wished afterwards they had been economical and gone to Egypt. But she didn't falter. She ran away on Sunday the 21st. She had put on her simplest costume, and her portmanteau told no tales. To make-believe to the fullest extent, she travelled in a third-class compartment. Already she was greatly excited. As the train crawled out of Victoria she could have clapped her hands.