“Come in, come in!” repeated Lady Amelia, bursting into speech. “Shut the door. I’m sorry to have troubled you, I’m sure. No. I don’t want the bandboxes. Miss Jane Vibart cannot possibly go out to-night. She has most successfully contrived to make such a spectacle of herself that I doubt if she will be able to show again for the rest of the season.” “Oh, Mamma!” exclaimed the elder daughter in reproachful accents. “’Tisn’t Jenny’s fault!” “You’ll not say it’s mine, I trust?” retorted a deeply annoyed parent, and, as the beauty lifted her face, Pamela saw that it was indeed disfigured almost out of recognition by that distressing if not alarming complaint, the toothache. The poor girl’s left cheek was swollen to comicality. Jane Vibart, with a loud boo-hoo, buried her head in her handkerchief again, and Sally, with a championship which Pamela thought the younger ill deserved, protested: “But Mamma, Mr. Tugwell hurt her so dreadfully last time, that poor Jenny was terrified----” “Foh! I’ve no patience with her,” stormed the lady. “She’ll have to have it out now, and ’twill hurt her a vast deal more. Provoking creature, and it is so important, so particularly important that she should go to-night. Well, Miss, if you lose your chance of the match of the year, you’ve none but yourself to blame, and let that be a comfort to you. Pray, young woman, did you not hear me say I should not require your goods? O! I could shed tears of vexation, and it all so neatly planned! The Duchess herself would have seen that you took the floor with Mr. W., and says she to me: ‘The child has but to unmask at supper, and I think we may say ’tis as good as done.’ Mr. W., his uncle’s heir, and such a personable, worthy young man, by all accounts, and looking to be settled. Well, well! Meeking, take Miss Jane to her apartment, and tell Mrs. Martha to apply the leeches. ’Tis time for me to be dressing.” Whether rendered irritable by pain, or overwhelmed by disappointment at the probable loss of Mr. W., or goaded by the thought of the leeches, certain it is that the afflicted daughter broke out with a passion which amazed Miss Pounce so much that she turned on the threshold to stare, and perhaps even admire. The beauty declared that Mamma was a nasty unkind thing, and that she herself wished she was dead. “Jane!” cried Lady Amelia, in a voice of thunder. “Sarah, take your sister away.” Ere the sobbing girl, advancing in three totters and a stop to gasp, could reach the door, Lady Amelia bethought herself of a fitting punishment which spoke volumes for the matron’s methods of education. “Your sister shall go in your place to-night. Yes, Jane, not another word. I have quite made up my mind. Sarah, get ready to accompany me.”