Angela and her niece were on the terrace in the evening coolness. The atmosphere was less oppressive here by the flowing tide than anywhere else in London; but even here there was a heaviness in the night air, and Henriette sprawled her long thin legs wearily on the cushioned bench where she lay, and vowed that it would be sheer folly for Priscilla to insist upon her going to bed at her usual hour of nine, when everybody knew she could not sleep. “I scarce closed my eyes last night,” she protested, “and I had half a mind to put on a petticoat and come down to the terrace. I could have come through the yellow drawing-room, where the men usually forget to close the shutters. And I should have brought my theorbo and serenaded you. Should you have taken me for a fairy, chère, if you had heard me singing?” “I should have taken you for a very silly little person who wanted to frighten her friends by catching an inflammation of the lungs.” “Well, you see, I thought better of it, though it would have been impossible to catch cold on such a stifling night I heard every clock strike in Westminster and London. It was light at five, yet the night seemed endless. I would have welcomed even a mouse behind the wainscot. Priscilla is an odious tyrant,” making a face at the easy-tempered gouvernante sitting by; “she won’t let me have my dogs in my room at night.” “Your ladyship knows that dogs in a bed-chamber are unwholesome,” said Priscilla. “No, you foolish old thing; my ladyship knows the contrary; for his Majesty’s bed-chamber swarms with them, and he has them on his bed even—whole families—mothers and their puppies. Why can’t I have a few dear little mischievous innocents to amuse me in the long dreary nights?” By dint of clamour and expostulation the honourable Henriette contrived to stay up till ten o’clock was belled with solemn tone from St. Paul’s Cathedral, which magnificent church was speedily to be put in hand for restoration, at a great expenditure. The wooden scaffolding which had been necessary for a careful examination of the building was still up. Until the striking of the great city clock, Papillon had resolutely disputed the lateness of the hour, putting forward her own timekeeper as infallible—a little fat round purple enamel watch with diamond figures, and gold hands much bent from being pushed backwards and forwards, to bring recorded time into unison with the young lady’s desires—a watch to which no sensible person could give the slightest credit. The clocks of London having demonstrated the futility of any reference to that ill-used Geneva toy, she consented to retire, but was reluctant to the last. “I am going to bed,” she told her aunt, “because this absurd old Prissy insists upon it, but I don’t expect a quarter of an hour’s sleep between now and morning; and most of the time I shall be looking out of the window, watching for the turn of the tide, to see the barges and boats swinging round.”