"Johnny Ludlow, I wish you would step into the next door and see whether anything has happened. Do you mind it? So strange that Madame St. Vincent does not send or come." I did not mind it at all. I rather liked the expedition, and passed out of the noisy and crowded room to the lovely, warm night-air. The sky was clear; the moon radiant. I was no longer on ceremony at Jenkins House, having been up to it pretty often with Dan or Sam, and on my own score. Lady Jenkins had been pleased to take a fancy to me, had graciously invited me to some drives in her red-wheeled carriage, she dozing at my side pretty nearly all the time. I could not help being struck with the utter abnegation of will she displayed. It was next door to imbecility. "Patty, Johnny Ludlow would like to go that way, I think, to-day may we?" she would say. "Must we turn back already, Patty?--it has been such a short drive." Thus she deferred to Madame St. Vincent in all things, small and great: if she had a will or choice of her own, it seemed that she never thought of exercising it. Day after day she would say the drives were short: and very short indeed they were made, upon some plea or other, when I made a third in the carriage. "I am so afraid of fatigue for her," madame whispered to me one day, when she seemed especially anxious. "But you take a much longer drive, when she and you are alone," I answered, that fact having struck me. "What difference does my being in the carriage make?--are you afraid of fatigue for the horses as well?" At which suggestion madame burst out laughing. "When I am alone with her I take care not to talk," she explained; "but when three of us are here there's sure to be talking going on, and it cannot fail to weary her." Of course that was madame's opinion: but my impression was that, let us talk as much as we would, in a high key or a low one, that poor nodding woman neither heard nor heeded it. "Don't you think you are fidgety about it, madame?" "Well, perhaps I am," she answered. "I assure you, Lady Jenkins is an anxious charge to me." Therefore, being quite at home now at Jenkins House (to return to the evening and the soirée I was telling of), I ran in the nearest way to do Mrs. Knox's behest. That was through the two back gardens, by the intervening little gate. I knocked at the glass-doors of what was called the garden-room, in which shone a light behind the curtains, and went straight in. Sitting near each other, conversing with an eager look on their faces, and both got up for Mrs. Knox's soirée, were Captain Collinson and Madame St. Vincent. "Mr. Ludlow!" she exclaimed. "How you startled me!" "I beg your pardon for entering so abruptly. Mrs. Knox asked me to run in and see whether anything was the matter, and I came the shortest way. She has been expecting you for some time."