"I believe I am all torn to bits?" said Ariadne, walking round and round her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take any notice of my question. "Now don't expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!" Ariadne said, "I shall not touch it. I don't mean to wear it again, but hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful dress!" "Don't drivel!" I said, "unless there is really something particular about the dress that I don't know." She didn't even rise to that, so I said, "I wonder you don't light up, and have a good look at it." "There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?" Ariadne said, sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn't mean to go to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly's dress on her bed, and was keeping calm just to tease me. "Did any one see you home?" I asked. "Yes, some one did," she answered, still in a sort of dream. "Did he kiss you in the cab?" I at last asked her, thinking that if anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was riled to extinction. "Oh, for Goodness' sake, get to bed!" I cried. "And if you are going to undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get into your bed very _very_ carefully!" That did it. "You naughty girl," she said quite quickly. "Have you been putting Lady Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It's too bad of you!" She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it. "So you have come?" she said, talking to it as if it were a person. "You are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you." "Well," said I, "you _are_ condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one might ask?" "Mr. Hermyre." "Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! I believe she's shy? How often did you dance with _Mister_ Hermyre?" "Oh, don't tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid." "Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, there!" "He is going to," said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn't know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night! I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it. "Did you--did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, as we have always agreed you would?" "I may have--I don't know--I hope not!" "You hope you didn't, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not run into him, or put his eye out or something?" "Beast, what do you mean?" "Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, and I presume it has been there all the evening!" Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and told me all about it quite nicely.