"My dear man," said Sulphuretta Hydrogen, "don't you know that they have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told that they have a kind of buttery-hatch--a cold pie always cut in the cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so disposed." "Well, they are free, at any rate--free from the trammels of custom----" "Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!" I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said-- "Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn't far behind-hand, though he is yellow!" And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball? I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there's a will there's a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to like it. Though I don't believe young men marry the girls who make eyes at them best, and as Ariadne's one object is to marry and get out of this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was. "I am sure I don't know," she said crossly. "I'll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is," I said. "She is in the party--in the room!" "Well, I can't help that!" said Ariadne, tossing her head. "Mother ought to look after her better." I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in her own house, and even her own daughter didn't seem to care whether she was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn't, for I thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino--I seemed to remember having helped to hem it. They needn't say that eyes can't look bright in a mask, for this woman's did. She went up to George, and she didn't speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat. "_Eh, bien, beau masque!_" was what she said. "I know you, but you do not know me!" "I know you by your eyes," he said. "Eyes like the sea----" Now, Lady Scilly's eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that George was talking without thinking.