‘You will bring up the boys to-morrow, then?’ says Lady Forster, who is always chattering. ‘And we’ll go for a long drive, and have a gipsy tea. That will be better than nothing. And as we go Susan shall show us the bits. No use in depending on George for that. He knows nothing of the scenery round here, or any other scenery for the matter of that, except African interiors, kraals, and nasty naked nigger women, and that. So immodest of him! He’ll come to grief some day. We can go somewhere for a gipsy tea to-morrow, can’t we, George? I’m dying to light a fire.’ ‘What, another!’ says Lord Jack, regarding her with a would-be woe-begone air. He lays his hand lightly on his heart. ‘It’s going to rain, I think,’ says Sir William presently; he is standing in one of the windows. ‘“Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!”’ exclaims Miss Forbes. ‘What a thing to say!’ ‘It always rains in Ireland, doesn’t it?’ asks Lady Muriel, in her soft, low voice. ‘Oh no—no indeed!’ cries Susan eagerly. ‘Does it, Mr. Crosby?’ ‘Certainly not. Lady Muriel must prolong her stay here’—smiling at the beautiful girl leaning in a picturesque attitude against the window-shutter—‘and take back with her a more kindly view of our climate.’ Yes; it is quite settled, thinks Susan. He loves her, and she—of course she loves him. And he wants her to prolong her stay, most naturally. And most naturally, too, he would like her to take back to England a kindly impression of her future home, of her future climate. Oh, how pretty, how lovely she is! Heavily, heavily beat the raindrops on the window-pane. ‘Never mind,’ says Lady Forster, whom nothing daunts; ‘we’ll have a dance. You love dancing, Susan, don’t you? Come along, then. Take your partners all, and let’s waltz into the music-room.’ In a second Susan finds Captain Lennox’s arm round her waist, and through the halls and the library they dance right into the music-room beyond. After her comes Crosby with Lady Muriel, and after them Lady Forster with—no, not Lord Jack, after all, but Sir William. And now the big woman whom Susan had noticed at luncheon has seated herself at the piano, and the poet has caught up a fiddle, and if the big woman can do nothing else on earth, she can at least play dance music to perfection, and the poet, ‘poor little fellow,’ as Susan calls him to herself—if he could only have heard her!—does not make too many false notes on the fiddle, so that she dances very gaily, feeling as if her feet are treading on air, and answering Captain Lennox’s whispered honeyed words with soft smiles and hurried breathing. Oh, how lovely it all is! And, oh, how happy Lady Muriel is going to be! The waltz has come to an end, and now Crosby is standing before her. And now his arm is round her waist, and he—oh yes, there is no doubt of it—he dances even better than Captain Lennox, and it is good of him, too, to spare so much time from the lovely Lady Muriel.