The Huguenot arrangement might have gone on in the undisturbed moonlight till the chill of the morning came to break it up if a cab-wheel _crescendo_ and a _strepitoso_ peal at the bell had not announced Sally, who burst into the house and rushed into the drawing-room tumultuously, to be corrected back by a serious word from Ann, the door-opener, that Missis and Mr. Fenwick had stepped out in the garden. Ann's parade of her conviction that this was _en regle_, when no one said it wasn't, was suggestive in the highest degree. Professional perjury in a law-court could not have been more self-conscious. Probably Ann knew all about it, as well as cook. Sally saw nothing. She was too full of great events at Ladbroke Grove Road--the sort of events that are announced with a preliminary, What _do_ you think, N or M? And then develop the engagement of O to P, or the jilting of Q by R. There was just time for a dozen words between the components of the Millais group in the moonlight. "Shall we tell Sally?" It was the Huguenot that asked the question. "Not just this minute. Wait till I can think. Perhaps I'll tell her upstairs. Now say good-bye before the chick comes, and go." And the chick came on the scene just too late to criticise the _pose_. "I say, mother!" this with the greatest _empressement_ of which humanity and youth are capable. "I've got something I _must_ tell you!" "What is it, kitten?" "Tishy's head-over-ears in love with the shop-boy!" "Sh-sh-sh-shish! You noisy little monkey, do consider! The neighbours will hear every word you say." So they will, probably, as Miss Sally's voice is very penetrating, and rings musically clear in the summer night. Her attitude is that she doesn't care if they do. "Besides they're only cats! And _nobody_ knows who Tishy is, or the shop-boy. I'll come down and tell you all about it." "We're coming up, darling!" You see, Sally had manifestoed down into the garden from the landing of the stair, which was made of iron openwork you knocked flower-pots down and broke, and you have had to have a new one--that, at least, is how Ann put it. On the stair-top Mrs. Nightingale stems the torrent of her daughter's revelation because it's so late and Mr. Fenwick must get away. "You must tell him all about it another time." "I don't know whether it's any concern of his." "Taken scrupulous, are we, all of a sudden?" says Fenwick, laughing. "That cock won't fight, Miss Pussy! You'll have to tell me all about it when I come to-morrow. Good-night, Mrs. Nightingale." A sort of humorous formality in his voice makes Sally look from one to the other, but it leads to nothing. Sally goes to see Fenwick depart, and her mother goes upstairs with a candle. In a minute or so Sally pelts up the stairs, leaving Ann and the cook to thumbscrew on the shutter-panels of the street door, and make sure that housebreaker-baffling bells are susceptible. "Do you know, mamma, I really _did_ think--what do you think I thought?"