At the sound of the French words a look of acute baffled misery has come into Lily's face, which, later on, deepens on her being assured that she and her brother have sufficiently feasted, and may efface themselves. Franky gallops off joyfully with his sword; and his sister follows reluctantly with hers. As soon as they are really out of earshot--Peggy has learnt by experience the length of Lily's ears--she answers the question that had been put to her by another. 'Do you think that I ought to have let her go?' Milady shrugs her shoulders. 'Everybody goes there. Lady Clanranald, who is the most straitlaced woman in London, takes her girls there; one must march with one's age.' The colour has deepened in Margaret's face. 'Then you think that I ought to have let her go?' Lady Roupell is peeling a peach. She looks up from it for an instant, with a careless little shrug. 'I daresay that she would have amused herself. If she likes bear-fighting, and apple-pie beds, and practical jokes, I am sure that she would.' 'And _songs_?' adds Peggy, with a curling lip; 'you must not forget _them_.' 'Pooh!' says milady cynically; 'Prue has no ear, she would not pick them up; and, after all, Betty's bark is worse than her bite.' 'Is it?' very doubtfully. 'Why do not you go too, and look after her?' asks the elder woman, lifting her shrewd eyes from the peach, off whose naked satin she has just whipped its rosy blanket, to her companion's troubled face. 'I am not invited.' 'And you would not go if you were--eh?' 'I would sooner go than let her go by herself,' replies poor Peggy with a groan. 'She is looking very ill,' says Lady Roupell, not unkindly. 'What have you done to her? I suppose that Freddy has been teasing her!' 'I suppose so,' dejectedly. 'I wish that he would leave her alone,' rejoins milady, with irritation. 'I have tried once or twice to broach the subject to him, but he always takes such high ground that I never know where to have him.' 'I wish you would send him away somewhere!' cries Peggy passionately. 'Could not you send him on a tour round the world?' The old lady shakes her head. 'He would not go; he would tell me that though there is nothing in the world he should enjoy so much, it is his obvious duty to stay by my side, and guide my tottering footsteps to the grave.' She laughs robustly, and Peggy joins dismally. There is a pause. 'She _does_ look very ill,' says the younger woman, in a voice of poignant anxiety; 'and long ago our doctor told us that she was not to be thwarted in anything. Oh, milady,' with an outburst of appeal for help and sympathy, 'do you think I am killing her? What _am_ I to do? oh, do advise me!'