Lalla listened to her outburst incredulously. She had dressed herself with special care, collected all her bouquets, and had resolved to enact a pretty little semi-penitential scene, with her stolid, easy-going, somewhat dull _fiancé_. She expected him now at any moment. What was this her aunt was saying? He had come; and seen; and fled! Impossible! He had been present last night! For once, she signally failed to sneer down, laugh down, or in any way suppress or silence her relative. Oh! she had been _mad_ to listen to Toby Joy, she was always too ready to be over-persuaded by him. He had had nothing on the hazard, whilst she had her all at stake. And her magnificent prospects, her title, her diamonds, were at that moment rapidly rumbling down hill in the rickety mail tonga. The presents, the invitations, the breakfast--what people would say, especially her own people, and the not unnatural elation of old Mother Brande, on whom she had ruthlessly trampled--all these things flashed through her mind. She would, of _course_, be sent home immediately. What a horrible outlook. To remain till the end of her days, as a sort of “object lesson,” a terrible living example, in the corner of her father’s large shabby country house. She would be pointed out to her younger sisters, and to others, as the old maid who had had her chance, and had danced it away! During all this time her aunt was speaking fluently, ceaselessly, passionately, but to deaf ears--for Lalla was listening to her own thoughts, and too much occupied by the clamour of an inward voice to heed these outpourings. At last one sentence struck her ear. “And what is to be done with the cake, that has cost two hundred rupees, and is now in my storeroom?” demanded Mrs. Langrishe, dramatically. “Raffle it,” cried Lalla, with a reckless laugh, “or have another starvation picnic, and give them wedding-cake and sugar ornaments!” “_Lalla!_” shrieked her aunt, in a voice that would have sounded strange even to her most intimate friends. “You are the most abominable, unprincipled, devilish----” “Oh, don’t bother!” interrupted Lalla, savagely; and she went out of the room, and gave the door a bang that caused the very cheval-glass to stagger in its place.