The fiddles' shrill voices grow silent at last; the bounding and stamping ceases; the departing carriage-wheels grind and crunch on the gravel drive. I shall not have much longer to wait; he will be coming soon now. But there is yet another interval. In ungovernable impatience, I open my door and listen. It seems to me that there reaches me from the hall, the sound of voices in loud and angry altercation; it is too far off for me to distinguish to whom they belong. Then there is silence again, and then at last--at last Roger comes. I hear his foot along the passage, and run to the door to intercept him, on his way to his dressing-room. He utters an exclamation of surprise on seeing me. "Not in bed yet? Not undressed? They told me that you were tired and had gone to bed hours ago!" "Did they?" I can say only these two little words. I am panting so, as if I had run hard. We are both in the room now, and the door is shut. I suppose I look odd; wild and gray and haggard through the poor remains of my rouge. "You are late," I say presently, in a voice of low constraint, "are not you? everybody went some time ago." "I know," he answers, with a slight accent of irritation; "it is Algy's fault! I do not know what has come to that boy; he hardly seems in his right mind to-night; he has been trying to pick a quarrel with Parker, because he lit Mrs. Huntley's candle for her." "Yes," say I, breathing short and hard. Has not he himself introduced her name? "And you know Parker is always ready for a row--loves it--and as he is as screwed to-night as he well can be, it has been as much as we could do to make them keep their hands off each other!" After a moment he adds: "Silly boy! he has been doing his best to fall out with _me_, but I would not let him compass that." "Has he?" Roger has begun to walk up and down, as I did a while ago; on his face a look of unquiet discontent. "It was a mistake his coming here this time," he says, with a sort of anger, and yet compassion, in his tone. "If he had had a grain of sense, he would have staid away!" "It is a thousand pities that you cannot send us _all_ home again!" I say, with a tight, pale smile--"send us packing back again, Algy and Barbara and _me_--replace me on the wall among the broken bottles, where you found me." My voice shakes as I make this dreary joke. "Why do you say that?" he cries, passionately. "Why do you _torment_ me? You know as well as I do, that it is impossible--out of the question! You know that I am no more able to free you than--" "You _would_, then, if you _could_?" cry I, breathing short and hard. "You _own_ it!" For a moment he hesitates; then-- "Yes," he says firmly, "I would! I did not think at one time that I should ever have lived to say it, but I _would_." "You are at least candid," I answer, with a sort of smothered sob, turning away.