"Who is the lady who has just left you?" asked the Earl as he greeted his cousin; and he glanced over his shoulder at the white domino disappearing in the throng. Susannah found in this her cue. "Miss Boyle," she said. "And it is about her that I wish to speak to you." Lord Lyndwood stepped into the alcove; Marius had departed; they, although on the edge of a great crowd, enveloped by music and laughter, were alone and unnoticed. "Did you not guess the subject on which I desired to see you?" questioned Susannah. The Earl looked at her smilingly, and flung himself into a chair. "Gad, but I'm tired," he said. "Well, I suppose you have seen the paragraph in the _Gazette_?" Miss Chressham gave him a keen glance from behind her mask. "Yes," she answered. "And Miss Boyle has seen it." The faintest tinge of colour came into my lord's weary face. "Also her fire-eating cousin; her father, too, I dare swear, and half London"--he kept his shadowed grey eyes on her face. "Well, are you Miss Boyle's deputy, Susannah?" "Yes," said Miss Chressham, sitting erect, with a hand clasped on a swiftly heaving breast. "I have been trying to gain a word with you since yesterday afternoon, when she, Selina, came to me." Lord Lyndwood interrupted. "With what object?" he asked, and his foot lightly beat time to the measure of the minuet. "Can you not imagine?" Susannah paused a moment striving with distaste for her task. "I am her close friend--she hath confided in me----" "Ah, what?" Miss Chressham lowered her agitated voice. "That the _Gazette_ gives only the truth." The Earl shrugged his shoulders. "A rarity! truth in the _Gazette_! no one will suspect it, my dear; I think Miss Boyle frightens herself for nothing." His languid eyes roved over the ballroom, his indolent handsome profile was towards his cousin, who flushed unseen under her mask, accusing him of lack of frankness and friendliness in thus dealing with her. "You resent my interference," she said in a low tone, "and, of a surety, I put myself in an ungracious position, but do we not know each other well enough--and, and like each other well enough, Rose, for me to venture to speak to you as Miss Boyle's mouthpiece?" "You do us both an honour," answered my lord. "Only, I cannot see that the affair calls for comment from anyone, even from Miss Boyle;" he slightly raised his fair brows. "Surely these things are better ignored?" And still he looked at the ballroom, and still Miss Chressham had the sense that he was not with her, not moved or even interested by what she said; yet she must be mistaken; he _was_ interested, vitally, and his seeming indifference was but the reserve he chose to show her, so she told herself; but either way, this manner of his made it difficult for her. "I think you take it too lightly, Rose," she said. "If you could have seen Miss Boyle's distress." Again that faint flush in his averted face; he tapped his mask against his knee.