"I see! Yes, if she--if she doesn't take it properly, he'll go away again, and I'm to be ready to stay here." Another change in the barometer came in a flash. "But she can't help being Lady Tristram now!" "It's all a most unjustifiable proceeding. He tricks the girl----" "Yes, he had to. That was the only chance. If he'd told her before----" "But isn't she in love with him?" "Oh, you don't know the Tristrams! Oh, what are we to do?" Save running through every kind and degree of emotion Mina seemed to find nothing to do. "And I'm bound to say that I consider our position most embarrassing." Mr Neeld spoke with some warmth, with some excuse too perhaps. To welcome a newly married couple home may be thought always to require some tact; when it is a toss-up whether they will not part again for ever under your very eyes the situation is not improved. Such trials should not be inflicted on quiet old bachelors; Josiah Cholderton had not done with his editor yet. "We must treat it as a mere trifle," the Imp announced, fixing on the thing which above all others she could not achieve. Yet her manner was so confident that Neeld gasped. "And if that doesn't do, we must tell her that the happiness of her whole life depends on what she does to-night." Variety of treatment was evidently not to be lacking. "I intend to take no responsibility of any kind. He's got himself into a scrape. Let him get out of it," persisted Neeld. "I thought you were his friend?" "I may be excused if I consider the lady a little too." "I suppose I don't care for Cecily? Do you mean that, Mr Neeld?" "My dear friend, need we quarrel too?" "Don't be stupid. Who's quarrelling? I never knew anybody so useless as you are. Can't you do anything but sit there and talk about responsibilities?" She was ranging about, a diminutive tiger of unusually active habits. She had wandered round the room again before she burst out: "Oh, but it's something to see the end of it!" That was his feeling too, however much he might rebuke himself for it. Human life at first-hand had not been too plentiful with him. The Imp's excitement infected him. "And he's back here after all!" she cried. "At least--Heavens, they'll be here directly, Mr Neeld!" "Yes, it's past seven," said he. "Come into the garden. We'll wait for them on the bridge." She turned to him as they passed through the hall. "Wouldn't you like something of this sort to happen to you?" she asked. No. He was perturbed enough as a spectator; he would not have been himself engaged in the play. "Why isn't everybody here?" she demanded, with a laugh that was again nervous and almost hysterical. "Why isn't Addie Tristram here? Ah, and your old Cholderton?" "Hark, I hear wheels on the road," said Mr Neeld. Mina looked hard at him. "She shall do right," she said, "and Harry shall not go." "Surely they'll make the best of a----?"