“She's coming, and she'll get it out of Lorraine, and they'll all be down on us.” Charles Edward and Aunt Elizabeth stood talking together, and just then I saw her put her hand on his shoulder. “She's trying to come round him,” said Alice. I began to see she was really in earnest now. “He's squirming. Oh, Peggy, maybe she's found it out some way, and she's telling him, and they'll tell you, and you'll think I am false as hell!” I knew she didn't mean anything by that word, because whenever she says such things they're always quotations. She began to cry real tears. “It was Billy put it into my head,” said she, “and Lorraine put it into his. Lorraine wanted him to write out exactly what he knew, and he didn't know anything except about the telegram and how the letter got wuzzled, and I told him I'd help him write it as it ought to be 'if life were a banquet and beauty were wine'; but I told him we must make him say in it how he'd got to conceal it from me, or they'd think we got it up together. So I wrote it,” said Alice, “and Billy copied it.” Perhaps I wasn't nice to the child, for I couldn't listen to her. I was watching Charles Edward and Aunt Elizabeth, and saying to myself that mother'd want me to sit still and meet Aunt Elizabeth when she came--“like a good girl,” as she used to say to me when I was little and begged to get out of hard things. Alice went on talking and gasping. “Peg,” she said, “he's perfectly splendid--Dr. Denbigh is.” “Yes, dear,” said I, “he's very nice.” “I've adored him for years,” said Alice. “I could trust him with my whole future. I could trust him with yours.” Then I laughed. I couldn't help it. And Alice was hurt, for some reason, and got up and held her head high and went into the house. And Aunt Elizabeth came up the drive, and that is how she found me laughing. She had on a lovely light-blue linen. Nobody wears such delicate shades as Aunt Elizabeth. I remember, one day, when she came in an embroidered pongee over Nile-green, father groaned, and grandmother said: “What is it, Cyrus? Have you got a pain?” “Yes,” said father, “the pain I always have when I see sheep dressed lamb fashion.” Grandmother laughed, but mother said: “Sh!” Mother's dear. This time Aunt Elizabeth had on a great picture-hat with light-blue ostrich plumes; it was almost the shape of her lavender one that Charles Edward said made her look like a coster's bride. When she bent over me and put both arms around me the plumes tickled my ear. I think that was why I was so cross. I wriggled away from her and said: “Don't!” Aunt Elizabeth spoke quite solemnly. “Dear child!” she said, “you are broken, indeed.” And I began to feel again just as I had been feeling, as if I were in a show for everybody to look at, and I found I was shaking all over, and was angry with myself because of it. She had drawn up a chair, and she held both my hands. “Peggy,” said she, “haven't you been to the hospital to see that poor dear boy?”