At this preface her heart sinks a little. 'What is it?' she asks curtly. 'Oh, only my luck!' throwing himself into a chair. 'By Jove'--looking round the room--'how cool you feel! and how good you smell!' 'I do not suppose that you came here to say that,' rejoins she, still standing over him in expectant anxiety. His answer is to try and get possession of her hand. 'Peggy,' he says plaintively, 'that is not a nice way to speak to me; that is not the way I like to be spoken to. The reason why I came here--it is very inhospitable of you to insist upon my giving a reason--was to say'--sighing profoundly--'that I fear dear little Prue and I shall have to give up our ride this afternoon.' Her foreboding was a true one then! 'Why?' 'Oh, because--because--just my luck!' 'I understand,' replies she caustically. 'You are in the case of the man who telegraphed to the house where he did not wish to stay, "So sorry. Cannot come. _No lie ready._"' Freddy colours. 'Peggy, if I were not so really fond of you,' he says, in an injured voice, 'I should not allow you to speak to me like that. There are days when you rasp one like a file. Prue never rasps one.' 'Is that the reason why you think yourself justified in always letting her go to the wall?' asks Margaret, with a bitterness that seems out of proportion to the occasion; but in her mind's eye she sees the poor little figure that has been frolicking among the geraniums with dog and cat--sees, too, the metamorphosis that will be worked in it. Freddy rolls his curly head uneasily to and fro on the chair-back. 'You talk as if I were not quite as disappointed as she,' he says, in a lamentable tone. 'But what is one to do? When one has guests, one must entertain them. Somebody must entertain _her_.' 'Must entertain whom?' 'Oh, you know as well as I do! You are only asking out of ill-nature. Betty, of course!' 'Betty, of course!' repeats she after him, with an indefinable accent. 'Well, Peggy, I appeal to you. What could I do, when she asked me point-blank? You know that I never can refuse to do anything that anybody asks me point-blank.' 'Then suppose that _I_ ask you point-blank to throw _her_ over?' suggests Margaret, looking full at him with her straightforward blue eyes. 'But you would not,' returns he hastily. 'You dear thing, it would not be the least like you; and it would only make her hate Prue for life. Ah, you do not know Betty!' 'And, meanwhile, where is her _âme damnée_, pray?' asks Margaret with a curling nose. '"Where is John Talbot? Where is valiant John?"' Freddy shrugs his shoulders. 'Valiant John is a little slack of late; he wants poking up a bit. But'--with a coaxing change of tone--'it will be just the same to Prue to go another day, will not it? and you will tell her, will not you? I--I really am in a great hurry this morning; and I--I--think I had rather _you_ told her.' 'I will do nothing of the kind,' replies Peggy severely. 'You may do your own errands.'