occasion one of the doors opened to readmit Lord Beaupré, who struck her as pale and who immediately approached Mrs. Ashbury with a remark evidently intended for herself alone. It led this lady to rise with a movement of dismay and, after a question or two, leave the room. Lord Beaupré left it again in her company. Mr. Bolton-Brown had also noticed the incident; his conversation languished and he asked Mrs. Gosselin if she supposed anything had happened. She turned it over a moment and then she said: "Yes, something will have happened to Miss Ashbury." "What do you suppose? Is she ill?" "I don't know; we shall see. They're capable of anything." "Capable of anything?" "I've guessed it,--she wants to have a grievance." "A grievance?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was mystified. "Of course you don't understand; how should you? Moreover it doesn't signify. But I'm so vexed with them (he's a very old friend of ours) that really, though I dare say I'm indiscreet, I can't speak civilly of them." "Miss Ashbury's a wonderful type," said the young American. This remark appeared to irritate his companion. "I see perfectly what has happened; she has made a scene." "A scene?" Mr. Bolton-Brown was terribly out of it. "She has tried to be injured--to provoke him, I mean, to some act of impatience, to some failure of temper, of courtesy. She has asked him if he wishes her to leave the house at midnight, and he may have answered----But no, he wouldn't!" Mrs. Gosselin suppressed the wild supposition. "How you read it! She looks so quiet." "Her mother has coached her, and (I won't pretend to say _exactly_ what has happened) they've done, somehow, what they wanted; they've got him to do something to them that he'll have to make up for." "What an evolution of ingenuity!" the young man laughed. "It often answers." "Will it in this case?" Mrs. Gosselin was silent a moment. "It _may_." "Really, you think?" "I mean it might if it weren't for something else." "I'm too judicious to ask what that is." "I'll tell you when we're back in town," said Mrs. Gosselin, getting up. Lord Beaupré was restored to them, and the ladies prepared to withdraw. Before she went to bed Mrs. Gosselin asked him if there had been anything the matter with Maud; to which he replied with abysmal blankness (she had never seen him wear just that face) that he was afraid Miss Ashbury was ill. She proved in fact in the morning too unwell to return to London: a piece of news communicated to Mrs. Gosselin at breakfast. "She'll have to stay; I can't turn her out of the house," said Guy Firminger. "Very well; let her stay her fill!" "I wish you would stay too," the young man went on. "Do you mean to nurse her?" "No, her mother must do that. I mean to keep me company." "_You_? You're not going up?" "I think I had better wait over to-day, or long enough to see what's the matter." "Don't you _know_ what's the matter?" He was silent a moment. "I may have been nasty last night."