"How many of them at a time?" asks her brother-in-law with deep interest. "Not more than two, Joyce, please. I couldn't grasp any more.

My intellect is of a very limited order."

"So is mine, I think," says Joyce, with a tired little sigh.

Monkton, although determined to treat the matter lightly, looks very sorry for her. Evidently she is out of joint with the whole world at present.

"How did Lady Baltimore take it?" asks he, with all the careless air of one asking a question on some unimportant subject.

"She was angry with Mr. Beauclerk for not leaving me at the inn, and coming home himself."

"Unsisterly woman!"

"She was quite right, after all," says Mrs. Monkton, who had defended Beauclerk herself, but cannot bear to hear another take his part.

"And, Dysart--how did he take it?" asks Monkton, smiling.

"I don't see how he should take it, anyway," says Joyce, coldly.

"Not even with soda water?" says her brother-in-law. "Of course, it would be too much to expect him to take it neat. You broke it gently to him I hope."

"Ah, you don't understand Mr. Dysart," says the girl, rising abruptly.

"I did not understand him until yesterday."

"Is he so very abstruse?"

"He is very insolent," says Miss Kavanagh, with a sudden touch of fire, that makes her sister look at her with some uneasiness.

"I see," says Mr. Monkton, slowly. He still, unfortunately, looks amused. "One never does know anybody until he or she gives way to a towering pa.s.sion. So he gave you a right good scolding for being caught in the rain with Beauclerk. A little unreasonable, surely; but lovers never yet were famous for their common sense. That little ingredient was forgotten in their composition. And so he gave you a lecture?"

"Well, he is not likely to do it again," says she slowly.

"No? Then it is more than likely that I shall be the one to be scolded presently. He won't be able to content himself with silence. He will want to air his grievances, to revenge them on some one, and if you refuse to see him, I shall be that one. There is really only one small remark to be made about this whole matter," says Mr. Monkton, with a rueful smile, "and it remains for me to make it. If you will encourage two suitors at the same time, my good child, the least you may expect is trouble. You are bound to look out for 'breakers ahead,' but (and this is the remark) it is very hard lines for a fourth and most innocent person to have those suitors dropped straight on him without a second's notice. I'm not a born warrior; the brunt of the battle is a sort of gayety that I confess myself unsuited for. I haven't been educated up to it. I----"

"There will be no battle," says Joyce, in a strange tone, "because there will be no combatants. For a battle there must be something to fight for, and here there is nothing. You are all wrong, Freddy. You will find out that after awhile. I have a headache, Barbara. I think," raising her lovely but pained eyes to her sister, "I should like to go into the garden for a little bit. The air there is always so sweet."

"Go, darling," says Barbara, whose own eyes have filled with tears. "Oh, Freddy," turning reproachfully to her husband as the door closes on Joyce, "how could you so have taken her? You must have seen how unhappy she was. And all about that horrid Beauclerk."

Monkton stares at her.

"So that is how you read it," says he at last.

"There is no difficulty about the reading. Could it be in larger print?"

"Large enough, certainly, as to the unhappiness, but for 'Beauclerk' I should advise the printer to insert Dysart.'"

"Dysart? Felix?"

"Unless, indeed, you could suggest a third."

"Nonsense!" says Mrs. Monkton, contemptuously. "She has never cared for poor Felix. How I wish she had. He is worth a thousand of the other; but girls are so perverse."

"They are. That is just my point," says her husband. "Joyce is so perverse that she won't allow herself to see that it is Dysart she preferred. However, there is one comfort, she is paying for her perversity."

"Freddy," says his wife, after a long pause, "do you really think that?"

"What? That girls are perverse?"

"No, no! That she likes Felix best?"

"That is indeed my fixed belief."

"Oh, Freddy!" cries his wife, throwing herself into his arms. "How beautiful of you, I've always wanted to think that, but never could until now--now that----"

"My clear judgment has been brought to bear upon it. Quite right, my dear, always regard your husband as a sort of demi-G.o.d, who----"

"Pouf!" says she. "Do you think I was born without a grain of sense? But really, Freddy----Oh! if it might be! Poor, poor darling! how sad she looked. If they have had a serious quarrel over her drive with that detestable Beauclerk--why--I----" Here she bursts into tears, and with her face buried on Monkton's waistcoat, makes little wild dabs at the air with a right hand that is only to be appeased by having Monkton's handkerchief thrust into it.

"What a baby you are!" says he, giving her a loving little shake. "I declare, you were well named. The swift transitions from the tremendous 'Barbara' to the inconsequent 'Baby' takes but an instant, and exactly expresses you. A moment ago you were bent on withering me: now, I am going to wither you."

"Oh, no! don't," says she, half laughing, half crying. "And besides, it is you who are inconsequent. You never keep to one point for a second."

"Why should I?" says he, "when it is such a disagreeable one. There let us give up for the day. We can write 'To be continued' after it, and begin a fresh chapter to-morrow."

Meantime, Joyce, making her way to the garden with a hope of finding there, at all events, silence, and opportunity for thought, seats herself upon a garden chair, and gives herself up a willing prey to melancholy. She had desired to struggle against this evil, but it had conquered her, and tears rising beneath her lids are falling on her cheeks, when two small creatures emerging from the summer house on her left catch sight of her.

They had been preparing for a rush, a real Redshank, painted and feathered, descent upon her, when something in her sorrowful att.i.tude becomes known to them.

Fun dies within their kind little hearts. Their Joyce has come home to them--that is a matter for joy, but their Joyce has come home unhappy--that is a matter for grief. Step by step, hand in hand, they approach her, and even at the very last, with their little b.r.e.a.s.t.s overflowing with the delight of getting her back, it is with a very gentle precipitation that they throw themselves upon her.

And it never occurs to them, either, to trouble her for an explanation; no probing questions issue from their lips. She is sorry, that is all.

It is enough for their sympathies. Too much.

Joyce herself is hardly aware of the advent of the little comforters, until two small arms steal around her neck, and she finds Mabel's face pressed close against her own.

"Let me kiss her, too," says Tommy, trying to push his sister away, and resenting openly the fact of her having secured the first attempt at consolation.

"You mustn't tease her, she's sorry. She's very sorry about something,"

says Mabel, turning up Joyce's face with her pink palm. "Aren't you, Joyce? There's droppies in your eyes?"

"A little, darling," says Joyce, brokenly.

"Then I'll be sorry with you," says the child, with all childhood's divine intuition that to sorrow alone is to know a double sorrow. She hugs Joyce more closely with her tender arms, and Joyce, after a battle with her braver self, gives way, and breaks into bitter tears.

"There now! you've made her cry right out! You're a naughty girl," says Tommy, to his sister in a raging tone, meant to hide the fact that he too, himself is on the point of giving way; in fact, another moment sees him dissolved in tears.

"Never mind, Joycie. Never mind. We love you!" sobs he, getting up on the back of the seat behind her, and making a very excellent attempt at strangulation.