“You don’t like me at all, Miss Summerhayes. After that home-thrust I have nothing for it but to make my bow and take my leave.” CHAPTER XIV. Miss Harwood came into the drawing-room in the afternoon, at five o’clock, when the little party were all assembled, with an open note in her hand. “Fancy, mamma, how annoying,” she said, “Charley cannot come to dinner. Some engagement, business, has turned up; and he says, since you kindly allow him to dispense with ceremony----” “Oh, I should think so,” cried Mrs. Harwood. “Let him keep any business engagement, for goodness’ sake. He has not too many of them, I fear.” “He has more than you think,” said Gussy. “His time is far more taken up than you suppose.” “Well,” said Mrs. Harwood, “he might have let us know sooner, and then I should not have ordered those partridges. Game is thrown away upon women. You all like a chicken just as well.” “I’ll tell cook,” said Gussy, “to put them aside for to-morrow; but I don’t suppose he knew till the last moment.” Janet had been going on with her work very demurely, taking no notice, feeling somewhat guilty, yet recognizing with a throb of elation that she was not the unimportant person they all thought her. Janet was of opinion that it was best to have no secrets, for secrets have an infallible certainty of being found out. So she lifted her voice at this point and said, “I saw Mr. Meredith in Mimpriss’s when I was there for the crewels. He was choosing some music.” “Did he tell you he was not coming?” Gussy asked, somewhat breathlessly. “He held up a song,” said Janet, and said, “This is for to-night.” Which was quite true. To keep back a little is very different, she said to herself, from telling a fib. And now any gossip might tell them she had been seen with Mr. Meredith, and no harm could come. “Ah! you see it must have been quite sudden, mamma. Did you notice, Miss Summerhayes, what the song was?” “I saw Tosti’s name at the bottom of the page, but I did not look at it more closely,” said Janet. “He held it up to me while I was getting my crewels, and said something about your voice.” “He should not speak of my voice or of me at all in a shop,” said Gussy, with a bright look and an air of flattered grievance. To think that he could not refrain from speaking of her, even in a shop, to anybody whom he might meet, was sweet to poor Gussy, as it was also sweet to blame him, and resent his foolish, lover-like weakness. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it will be for to-morrow night. I will tell cook about the partridges, mamma.”