Meanwhile Miss Blessington, a little out of breath with her exertions, is resting on a chair, in bright blue velvet and a more delicate pink-and-white porcelain face than any of the other shepherdesses. Over her Gerard is leaning--frowning, sad, and heavy-hearted. Over and over again he has tried to turn his eyes to other groups, but again and again, contrary to his will, they return and fix themselves upon that slender staggering figure in black. Once he sees her on the point of falling--saved only by being caught with quick adroitness in her companion's arms. He draws his breath involuntarily hard. How dare any man but he touch her--lay a finger upon her fair person? One of the old simple instincts, stronger--oh, how far stronger!--than any of the restrictions with which our civilisation has sought to bind them--a great lust of raging jealousy--is upon him. "I _hate_ her!" he says to himself, fiercely; "she is a vile unprincipled coquette. Thank God, I found her out in time! Thank God, I washed my hands of her before it was too late! And yet--and yet--if I could but pick a quarrel with that fellow!" What right has Gerard to object if every man upon the ground catch her in big arms, and hold her there under his very eyes? He has washed his hands of her, thank God! All his rights of proprietorship in womankind centre in the calm blue statue, smiling with even placidness on himself, on his poodle, on all the world--his Constance, whom no one is thinking of taking from him; his own--oh, blissful thought!--in life, in death, and in eternity! In the meantime the remarks upon Esther vary from the wildly laudatory to the discriminatingly censuring. "She is extwemely dark," says the _dwagoon_, as he would have called himself; "a thowough bwunette; must have a touch of the tar-bwush, I fancy!" The stable-clock strikes four. Esther starts, as much as scullion Cinderella started at the chiming midnight. "I must go" she says, hastily; "I shall be wanted." "Wanted?" he repeats, inquiringly. "And are not you wanted here? You cannot be in two places at once, like a bird." "Mrs. Blessington will want me--I am her companion," she answers, colouring slightly. "I daresay you did not know it." ("He would not have been so civil to me if he had, I daresay," is her mental reflection.) "Yes, I did." "Who told you?--or have all 'companions' such a family likeness that you detected me at a glance?" "Miss Blessington told me; and for the first time in my life I wished myself an old woman," he replies, sentimentally. She laughs, a little embarrassed. She knows as well as he does that he does _not_ wish to be an old woman, even for the pleasure of having her to carry his air-cushion and spectacle-case. But civil speeches are always more or less untrue, and none the less pleasant for that.