Before very long, however, Angelica burst in upon them, with her hair down, and in the shortest and oldest dress she possessed. Her passionate love for her brother had always been the great hopeful and redeeming point of her character, and if she did show it principally by banging his head, she never meant to hurt him. Almost any other sister would have owed him a grudge for not admiring her in her first fine gown, and so spoiling her pleasure; but Angelica saw that he was thinking that the old days were over, and there had come a change now which would divide them, and she thought only of the pain he was suffering on that account. So, when she found that he was not going to join the ladies in the drawing room, she rushed upstairs to her own room, which her maid was arranging for the night, and relieved her feelings by tearing off her dinner dress, rolling it in a whisp, and throwing it at the woman. Her petticoats followed it, and then she kicked off her white satin shoes, one of which lit on the mantelpiece, the other on the dressing table; and, tearing out her hairpins, flung them about the floor in all directions. "My old brown gown, Elizabeth," she demanded, stamping. "What's the matter, Miss--" But Angelica had snatched the gown from the wardrobe, put it on, and was halfway downstairs, buttoning it as she went, before the maid could finish the sentence. When she entered the schoolroom, she threw herself on her knees beside Diavolo, and hugged him tight, as if she been going to lose him altogether, or he had just escaped from a great danger. "I won't wear long dresses if you don't like them," she protested. "Well, you can't go about like that," he grumbled, recovering himself the moment he felt her close to him again, and struck by a sense of impropriety in her short skirt after the grown-up appearance she had presented in the long one. "You look like a beggar." "Well, if I _do_ wear a long one," she declared, "it shall only be a disguise. I promise you I'll be just as bad as ever in it," and she drew a handkerchief out of her pocket, which had been left there for months and was frowsy, and wiped her own eyes and Diavolo's abruptly, "Your feelings are quite boggy, Diavolo," she said, giving a dry sob herself as she spoke. "You can't touch them at all without coming to water. You cry when you laugh." Mr. Ellis had stolen softly out of the room as soon as he could do so unobserved, and now the twins were sitting together in their favourite position on the same chair, with their arms around each other, and Angelica's dark head slanted so as to lean against Diavolo's fair one. He had rewarded her last remark with a melancholy grin; but the clouds had broken, and it now only required time for them to roll away. "You'll get a moustache in time," Angelica proceeded, in her most matter-of-fact tone. "I can see signs of it now in some lights, only it's so fair it doesn't show much." "I'll shave it to make it darker," he suggested.