"Ah! you approve of it," says Kelly, with suspicious gratitude. "Then let us arrange it at once. Miss Beresford might throw her arms round Ryde, for example: that would be charming." Desmond looking at this moment as if he would willingly murder him, Mr. Kelly is apparently satisfied, and sinks to rest with his head upon his arm once more. No one else has heard the suggestion. "I think you might help me, instead of giving voice to insane propositions," says Olga, reproachfully, turning her eyes upon Mr. Kelly's bowed form,--he is lying prostrate on the grass,--which is shaking in a palsied fashion. "I really _did_ believe in _you_," she says, whereupon the young man, springing to his feet, flings his arms wide, and appeals in an impassioned manner to an unprejudiced public as to whether he has not been racking his brain in her service for the last half-hour. "Then I wish you would go and rack it in somebody else's service," says Mrs. Bohun, ungratefully. "Hear her!" says Mr. Kelly, gazing slowly round him. "She still persists in the unseemly abuse. She is bent on breaking my heart and driving sleep from mine eyelids. It is ungenerous, the more so that she knows I have not the courage to tear myself from her beloved presence. You, Ronayne, and you, Rossmoyne, can sympathize with me: "'In durance vile here must I wake and weep, And all my frowzy couch in sorrow steep.' Fancy a frowzy couch saturated with tears! you know," reproachfully to Olga, "_you_ wouldn't like to have to lie on it." "Oh, do come and sit down here near me, and be silent," says Olga, in desperation. "Why not have a play?" says Captain Cobbett, who with Mr. Ryde has driven over from Clonbree. "'The play's the thing,'" says Brian Desmond, lazily; "but when you are about it, make it a farce." "Oh, _no_!" says Miss Fitzgerald, with a horrified gesture; "_anything_ but that! Why not let us try one of the good old comedies?--'The School for Scandal,' for example?" "_What!_" says Mr. Kelly, very weakly. He is plainly quite overcome by this suggestion. "Well, why not?" demands the fair Bella, with just a _soupcon_ of asperity in her tone,--as much as she ever allows herself when in the society of men. She makes up for this abstinence by bestowing a liberal share of it upon her maid and her mother. "It's--it's such a naughty, naughty piece," says Mr. Kelly, bashfully, beating an honorable retreat from his first meaning. "Nonsense! One can strike out anything distasteful." "Shades of Farren--and----Who would be Lady Teazle?" says Olga. "I would," says Bella, modestly. "That is more than good of you," says Olga, casting a curious glance at her from under her long lashes. "But I thought, perhaps----You, Hermia, would you not undertake it? You know, last season, they said you were----" "No, dear, thanks. No, _indeed_," with emphasis. "Cobbett does Joseph Surface to perfection," breaks in Mr. Ryde, enthusiastically.