lost his temper and pulled her hair, and she got hold of his and dragged him out of the room by his--my presence of course counted for nothing. And the next I saw of them they were on their ponies in a secluded grassy glade of the forest, tilting at each other with long poles for the dukedom. Angelica says she means to beat Demosthenes hollow--I use her own phraseology to give character to the quotation; that delivering orations with a natural inclination, to stammering was nothing to get over compared to the disabilities which being a girl imposes upon her; but she means to get over them all by hook, which she explains as being the proper development of her muscles and physique generally, and by crook, which she defines as circumventing the slave drivers of her sex, a task which she seems to think can easily be accomplished by finessing." "And what was the last thing?" Mrs. Orton Beg inquired, smiling indulgently. "Oh, that was very simple," Lord Dawne rejoined. "Diavolo, dressed in velvet, was caught and taken up by a policeman for recklessly driving a hansom in Oxford Street, Angelica being inside the same disguised in something of her mother's." "I wonder it was Angelica who went inside!" Mrs. Orton Beg exclaimed. "Well, that was what her mother said," Lord Dawne replied; "and both her parents seem to think the matter was not nearly so bad as it might have been in consequence. Mr. Hamilton-Wells had to pay a fine for the furious driving, and use all his influence with the Press to keep the thing out of the papers." "But where did the children get the hansom?" Mrs. Beale begged to be informed. "I regret to say that they hailed it through the dining room window, and plied the driver with raw brandy until his venal nature gave in to their earnestly persuasive eloquence and the contents of their purses, and he consented to let Diavolo 'just try what it was like to sit up on that high box,' Angelica having previously got inside, and, of course, the moment the young scamp had the reins in his hands he drove off full tilt." "Oh, dear, _poor_ Lady Adeline!" Mrs. Beale exclaimed. Lord Dawne smiled again, and changed the subject. "Did you feel the storm much here?" he asked. "My trees have suffered a great deal, I am sorry to say." "Ah, that reminds me," Mrs. Beale began. "A very strange and solemn thing happened on the day of the storm; have you heard of it, Olive?" "No," Mrs. Orton Beg answered with interest. "What was it?"