There she found half the evening's guests gone, and the other half well on the move. Some of these glanced at her inquiringly, with "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," but she paid no heed to any of them. Her mother came eagerly up to her, anxiety purpling every vein of her mottled countenance, but no word did she utter, till, having put on their cloaks, the two waited together on the steps of the mansion, with flunkeys on either side, for the hired brougham to bowl up in as _un_-hired a style as was possible at the price of one guinea for the night's outing. "Where is Mr. Helmsley?" then asked Mrs. Sorrel. "In his own room, I believe," replied Lucy, frigidly. "Isn't he coming to see you into the carriage and say good-night?" "Why should he?" demanded the girl, peremptorily. Mrs. Sorrel became visibly agitated. She glanced at the impassive flunkeys nervously. "O my dear!" she whimpered softly, "what's the matter? Has anything happened?" At that moment the expected vehicle lumbered up with a very creditable clatter of well-assumed importance. The flunkeys relaxed their formal attitudes and hastened to assist both mother and daughter into its somewhat stuffy recess. Another moment and they were driven off, Lucy looking out of the window at the numerous lights which twinkled from every story of the stately building they had just left, till the last bright point of luminance had vanished. Then the strain on her mind gave way--and to Mrs. Sorrel's alarm and amazement, she suddenly burst into a stormy passion of tears. "It's all over!" she sobbed angrily, "all over! I've lost him! I've lost everything!" Mrs. Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands convulsively. "Oh, you little fool!" she burst out, "what have you done?" Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves. "I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own instinct!" she said, in sepulchral tones. "It came to me like a flash, when I was talking to him this evening! I said to myself, 'he is in a moral mood.' And he was. Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful! If I had only thought he would carry on that mood with you, I would have warned you! You could have held off a little--it would perhaps have been the wiser course." "I should think it would indeed!" cried Lucy, dabbing her eyes with her scented handkerchief; "He would have left me every penny he has in the world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as possible!" Mrs. Sorrel sank back with a groan.