Margaret makes a gesture of annoyance, and irritably upsets Mink, who has just curled himself upon her skirt; but she offers no remonstrance, and it is a quarter of an hour before--the brougham with its Harboroughs, late as usual, and galloping to catch the train, having whirled past and been watched till quite out of sight--Prue saunters up radiant. 'She kissed her hand to me all the way up the hill!' says she, beaming with pleasure at the recollection. 'I threw her a little bunch of jessamine just as the carriage went by. She put her head out in a second, and caught it _in her teeth_!' Was not it clever of her? She _is_ so clever!' 'Why should she kiss her hand to you? Why should you throw her jessamine?' asks Peggy gloomily. 'Why should not I?' returns the other warmly. 'I am sure she has been kind enough to me, if you only knew!' 'You were not so fond of her last week,' says Margaret, lifting a pair of very troubled eyes to her sister's face. 'Have you already forgotten the three days running that she robbed you of your ride?' 'I cannot think how I could have been so silly!' returns Prue, with a rather forced laugh. 'Of course, it was a mere accident. _He_ says he wonders how I could have been so silly; he was dreadfully hurt about it. He says he looks upon her quite as an elder sister.' 'An elder sister!' echoes Peggy, breaking into a short angry laugh. 'The same sort of elder sister, I think, as the nursery-maid is to the Life Guardsman!' 'I cannot think how you can be so censorious!' retorts Prue, reddening. 'He says it is your one weakness. He admires your character more than that of any one he knows--he says it is--it is--laid upon such large lines; but that he has often been hurt by the harshness of your judgments of other people.' 'Indeed!' says Peggy, with a sort of snort. 'But I daresay that Lady Betty bandages up his wounds.' 'You must have noticed how kind she was to me last night,' continues Prue, thinking it wiser to appear not to have heard this last thrust. 'Of course, every one was longing to talk to her, but she quite singled me out--_me_, of all people! Oh, if you only knew!' 'If I only knew what?' inquires Margaret, struck by the recurrence of this phrase, to which on its first utterance she had paid little heed, as being the vague expression of Prue's girlish enthusiasm. Prue hesitates a moment. 'If--if--you only knew the delightful plan she has made!' 'What plan?' shortly and sternly. 'She--she--I cannot think why she did it; it must have been the purest kind-heartedness--she asked me to go and stay with her.' The colour has mounted brave and bright from Margaret's cheeks to her brow. 'She asked you to stay with her?' repeats she, with slow incisiveness; 'she had the impudence to ask you to stay with her!' Prue gives a start that is almost a bound. '_The impudence?_'