'I think she is _drunk_!' says Mrs. Evans charitably. 'I am sure she acts as if she were. If _I_ were to behave like that, I should expect men to take any kind of liberty with me. I should not feel that I had any right to complain if they did.' Peggy laughs. The idea of Mrs. Evans dancing the can-can, and getting kissed for her pains, is so irresistibly comic that for a minute or two she cannot help herself. Lady Roupell has grown tired of scolding Prue for her obstinate refusal of all invitations to dance. Milady has happily fallen in with an old friend, whose path hers had not crossed for thirty years. With him she fights o'er again the battles of her youth, and forgets her 'blessed bed.' She goes in to supper a second time, and has more _pâté de foie gras_. Peggy sees it in the guilt of her eye when she comes out. And meanwhile Peggy herself dances on indefatigably, returning, however, rigorously at the end of each dance to her chaperon, in order to assure herself that there is no change for the better in the position of Prue. None! none! none! Always standing on precisely the same spot; the poor little figure rigidly upright; the flushed cheekbones; the straining eyes. Always? No, thank God, not always! At last it is gone! At last she finds its place vacant. 'Where is Prue?' she asks eagerly, forgetting her usual gentle good manners so far as to break with her question into milady's _tête-à-tête_. 'Prue!' repeats the other, looking round rather tartly from her interrupted conversation; 'God bless my soul, child! how can I tell?' and so resumes her talk. But though this is not a very lucid explanation of her sister's absence, Peggy returns from it with a considerably lightened heart. Since it is a matter of certainty that Prue would never have consented to dance with any one but Freddy, he must have come at last. They are nowhere in sight, therefore he must have carried her off to some retired corner, where he is persuading her--so easy of persuasion, poor soul--of how much he has been suffering all evening, and how extremely loftily he has behaved. Of whatever he is persuading her, her long agony is for this evening at least probably at an end.