"You have compunctions? You're too good-natured." "I dare say I hit rather wild. It will look better for me to stop over twenty-four hours." Mrs. Gosselin fixed her eyes on a distant object. "Let no one ever say you're selfish!" "_Does_ anyone ever say it?" "You're too generous, you're too soft, you're too foolish. But if it will give you any pleasure Mary and I will wait till to-morrow." "And Hugh, too, won't he, and Bolton-Brown?" "Hugh will do as he pleases. But don't keep the American." "Why not? He's all right." "That's why I want him to go," said Mrs. Gosselin, who could treat a matter with candour, just as she could treat it with humour, at the right moment. The party at Bosco broke up and there was a general retreat to town. Hugh Gosselin pleaded pressing business, he accompanied the young American to London. His mother and sister came back on the morrow, and Bolton-Brown went in to see them, as he often did, at tea-time. He found Mrs. Gosselin alone in the drawing-room, and she took such a convenient occasion to mention to him, what she had withheld on the eve of their departure from Bosco, the reason why poor Maud Ashbury's frantic assault on the master of that property would be vain. He was greatly surprised, the more so that Hugh hadn't told him. Mrs. Gosselin replied that Hugh didn't know: she had not seen him all day and it had only just come out. Hugh's friend at any rate was deeply interested, and his interest took for several minutes the form of throbbing silence. At last Mrs. Gosselin heard a sound below, on which she said quickly: "That's Hugh--I'll tell him now!" She left the room with the request that their visitor would wait for Mary, who would be down in a moment. During the instants that he spent alone the visitor lurched, as if he had been on a deck in a blow, to the window, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, staring vacantly into Chester Street; then, turning away, he gave himself, with an odd ejaculation, an impatient shake which had the effect of enabling him to meet Mary Gosselin composedly enough when she came in. It took her mother apparently some time to communicate the news to Hugh, so that Bolton-Brown had a considerable margin for nervousness and hesitation before he could say to the girl, abruptly, but with an attempt at a voice properly gay: "You must let me very heartily congratulate you!" Mary stared. "On what?" "On your engagement." "My engagement?" "To Lord Beaupré." Mary Gosselin looked strange; she coloured. "Who told you I'm engaged?" "Your mother--just now." "Oh!" the girl exclaimed, turning away. She went and rang the bell for fresh tea, rang it with noticeable force. But she said "Thank you very much!" before the servant came. IV