Her eyes are almost moist as she speaks. The colour would no doubt come and go in her cheeks, only that unfortunately it has contracted the habit of never going, unless washed off by eau-de-Cologne. Against her will, Peggy feels her ill opinion melting away like mist; but happily, on her return to the drawing-room, she is able to restore it in its entirety. For no sooner have the men appeared than Lady Betty disappears. The exact moment of her flight and its companion Peggy has been unable to verify; as, at the moment when it must have taken place, she was buttonholed by Mrs. Evans on the subject of rose-rash, an unhandsome little disorder at present rioting among the Evans's ranks; and for which Peggy is supposed to have a specific. But though she did not actually see the person who shared Lady Betty's evasion, she is as sure as to who it was as if her very bodily eyes had looked upon him,--John Talbot, of course. With John Talbot she is now dishonestly philandering under the honest harvest-moon; to John Talbot she is now talking criminal nonsense, with those very lips that five minutes ago were laid upon the sacred velvet cheeks of her little children. With a curling lip Margaret looks round the room. Why, Prue is missing too, and Freddy! Prue, the prone to quinsy, to throats, to delicacy of all kinds, straying over the deep-dewed grass without cloak or goloshes! For it would be expecting something more than human of her to suppose that when invited out by her admirer to hear all that the poets have said of Orion and Arcturus and the sister Pleiads, she should stop him in the full flow of his inspiration to inquire after what the Americans prettily call her 'gums.' If she will only have the sense to keep to the gravel paths! The elder sister has walked to the window, and now stands straining her eyes down the long alley to see if she can catch any glimpse of the little figure that, since its wailing infancy seventeen years ago, has caused her so many anxious hours. Shall she take upon herself the invidious office of spy, and follow her? or trust to the child's common sense, and to the possibility of her occasionally dropping her eyes from the enormous moon, now queening it in a great field of radiance above her head, to her own thin-shod feet? She is still hesitating when a voice, coming from behind her, makes her start. 'What a night!' She turns to find that the utterer of this original ejaculation is none other than John Talbot. Is it possible that they have already returned from their lovers' ramble? But no! there is no sign of Lady Betty. It is clear that _he_ could not have been the companion of her stroll. For the second time this evening Margaret has found herself in error. '_You?_' she says, in a tone of rather vexed surprise. 'Why not?' 'I thought that you were out.' '_I!_ no!'