"Nobody but Lucilla ever could have thought of anything so delicious," was what everybody said. And then the two singers upstairs gave so much scope to curiosity. "Do you think they are all by themselves?" Lydia Brown was heard to ask, with a little natural anxiety; and the livelier imaginations among the party set to work at once to invent impossible tortures which the soprano might inflict on the contralto. But, to tell the truth, the two singers were by no means alone. Half the gentlemen of the dinner-party, who were past the sentimental age, and did not care about moonlight, had gone upstairs according to their use and wont, and remained there, finding, to their great satisfaction, room to move about, and comfortable chairs to sit down in. They sat and chatted in the corners in great content and good-humour, while Lucilla and Barbara executed the most charming duets. Now and then old Colonel Chiley paused to put his two hands softly together and cry "Brava!" but on the whole the gentlemen were not much disturbed by the music. And then there were a few ladies, who were subject to neuralgia, or apt to take bad colds in the head, who preferred being upstairs. So that if Lucilla had meant to pinch or maltreat her rival, circumstances would have made it impossible. Miss Marjoribanks did nothing to Barbara, except incite her to sing her very best; but no doubt she was the means of inflicting considerable pain on Mr Cavendish, who stood at a little distance, and looked and listened to both, and perhaps had inward doubts as to the wisdom of his choice. Such was the arrangement of the personages of the social drama, and it was in this way that everybody was occupied, when an event occurred which at a later period awoke much excitement in Carlingford, and had no small influence upon the future fate of some of the individuals whose history is here recorded.