'The notion is that it is one of your musicians--very dangerous, I am afraid; and I say, Cilla, did you ever do such a thing--you couldn't, I suppose--as lend her Shelley's poems?' 'I? No; certainly not.' 'There was a copy lying on the table in her little parlour, as if she had been writing something out from it. It is very odd, but it was in that peculiar olive-green morocco that some of the books in your father's library were bound in.' 'Not mine, certainly,' said Lucilla. 'Good Honor Charlecote would have run crazy if she thought I had touched a Shelley; a very odd study for Edna. But as to the olive-green, of course it was bound under the same star as ours.' 'Cilly, Cilly, now or never! photograph or not?' screamed Rashe, from behind her three-legged camera. 'Not!' was Lucilla's cavalier answer. 'Pack up; have done with it, Rashe. Pick me up at the school.' Away she flew headlong, the patient and disconcerted Horatia following her to her room to extract hurried explanations, and worse than no answers as to the sundries to be packed at the last moment, while she hastily put on hat and mantle, and was flying down again, when her brother, with outspread arms, nearly caught her in her spring. 'Hollo! what's up?' 'Don't stop me, Owen! I'm going to walk on with Mr. Prendergast and be picked up. I must speak to Edna Murrell.' 'Nonsense! The carriage will be out in five minutes.' 'I must go, Owen. There's some story of a demon in human shape on the water with her last night, and Mr. Prendergast can't get a word out of her.' 'Is that any reason you should go ramping about, prying into people's affairs?' 'But, Owen, they will send her away. They will take away her character.' 'The--the--the more reason you should have nothing to do with it,' he exclaimed. 'It is no business for you, and I won't have you meddle in it.' Such a strong and sudden assumption of fraternal authority took away her breath; and then, in terror lest he should know cause for this detention, she said-- 'Owen! you don't guess who it was?' 'How should I?' he roughly answered. 'Some villainous slander, of course, there is, but it is no business of yours to be straking off to make it worse.' 'I should not make it worse.' 'Women always make things worse. Are you satisfied now?' as the carriage was seen coming round. 'That is only to be packed.' 'Packed with folly, yes! Look here! 11.20, and the train at 12.5!' 'I will miss the train, go up later, and sleep in London.' 'Stuff and nonsense! Who is going to take you? Not I.'