"Mr. Beauclerk?"

"Yes--yes. The night of the ball at the Court, last autumn. I saw you with Mr. Beauclerk in the garden then, and he told me afterward you had been confiding in him about your cousin. The one in India. That you were going to be married to him. Oh! there must be truth--some truth in it.

Do try to think!"

"If," says Miss Maliphant, slowly, "I were to think until I was black in the face, as black as any Indian of 'em all, I couldn't even by so severe a process conjure up a cousin in Hindostan! And so he told you that?"

"Yes," says Joyce faintly. She feels almost physically ill.

"He's positively unique," says Miss Maliphant, after a slight pause. "I told you just now that he was a liar, but I didn't throw sufficient enthusiasm into the a.s.sertion. He is a liar of distinction very far above his fellows! I suppose it would be superfluous now to ask if that night you speak of you were engaged to Mr. Dysart?"

"Oh, no," says Joyce quickly, as if struck. "There never has been, there never will be aught of that sort between me and Mr. Dysart Surely--Mr.

Beauclerk did not----"

"Oh, yes, he did. He a.s.sured me--not in so many words (let me be perfectly just to him)--but he positively gave me to understand that you were going to marry Felix Dysart. There! Don't mind that," seeing the girl's pained face. "He was bound to say something, you know. Though it must be confessed the Indian cousin story was the more ingenious. Why didn't you tell me of that before?"

"Because he told it to me in the strictest confidence."

"Of course. Bound you on your honor not to speak of it, lest my feelings should be hurt. Really, do you know, I think he was almost clever enough to make one sorry he didn't succeed. Well, good-by." She rises abruptly, and, taking Joyce's hand, looks at her for a moment. "Felix Dysart has a good heart," says she, suddenly. As suddenly she kisses Joyce, and, crossing the room with a quick stride, leaves it.

CHAPTER XLIX.

"Shall we not laugh, shall we not weep?"

It is quite four o'clock, and therefore two hours later. Barbara has returned, and has learned the secret of Joyce's pale looks and sad eyes, and is now standing on the hearthrug looking as one might who has been suddenly wakened from a dream that had seemed only too real.

"And you mean to say--you really mean, Joyce, that you refused him?"

"Yes. I actually had that much common-sense," with a laugh that has something of bitterness in it.

"But I thought--I was sure----"

"I know you thought he was my ideal of all things admirable. And you thought wrong."

"But if not he----"

"Barbara!" says Joyce sharply. "Was it not enough that you should have made one mistake? Must you insist on making another?"

"Well, never mind," says Mrs. Monkton hastily. "I'm glad I made that one, at all events; and I'm only sorry you have felt it your duty to make your pretty eyes wet about it Good gracious!" looking put of the window, "who is coming now? d.i.c.ky Browne and Mr. Courtenay and those detestable Blakes. Tommy," turning sharply to her first-born. "If you and Mabel stay here you must be good. Do you hear now, good! You are not to ask a single question or touch a thing in the room, and you are to keep Mabel quiet. I am not going to have Mrs. Blake go home and say you are the worst behaved children she ever met in her life. You will stay, Joyce?" anxiously to her sister.

"Oh, I suppose so. I couldn't leave you to endure their tender mercies alone."

"That's a darling girl! You know I never can get on with that odious woman. Ah! how d'ye do, Mrs. Blake? How sweet of you to come after last night's fatigue."

"Well, I think a drive a capital thing after being up all night," says the new-comer, a fat, little, ill-natured woman, nestling herself into the cosiest chair in the room. "I hadn't quite meant to come here, but I met Mr. Browne and Mr. Courtenay, so I thought we might as well join forces, and storm you in good earnest. Mr. Browne has just been telling me that Lady Swansdown left the Court this morning. Got a telegram, she said, summoning her to Gloucestershire. Never do believe in these sudden telegrams myself. Stayed rather long in that anteroom with Lord Baltimore last night."

"Didn't know she had been in any anteroom," says Mrs. Monkton, coldly.

"I daresay her mother-in-law is ill again. She has always been attentive to her."

"Not on terms with her son, you know; so Lady Swansdown hopes, by the attention you speak of, to come in for the old lady's private fortune.

Very considerable fortune, I've heard."

"Who told you?" asks Mr. Browne, with a cruelly lively curiosity. "Lady Swansdown?"

"Oh, dear no!"

Pause! d.i.c.ky still looking expectant and Mrs. Blake uncomfortable. She is racking her brain to try and find some person who might have told her, but her brain fails her.

The pause threatens to be ghastly, when Tommy comes to the rescue.

He had been told off as we know to keep Mabel in a proper frame of mind, but being in a militant mood has resented the task appointed him. He has indeed so far given in to the powers that be that he has consented to accept a picture book, and to show it to Mabel, who is looking at it with him, lost in admiration of his remarkable powers of description.

Each picture indeed, is graphically explained by Tommy at the top of his lungs, and in extreme bad humor.

He is lying on the rug, on his fat stomach, and is becoming quite a martinet.

"Look at this!" he is saying now. "Look! do you hear, or I won't stay and keep you good any longer. Here's a picture about a boat that's going to be drowned down in the sea in one minnit. The name on it is"--reading laboriously--"'All hands to the pump.' And" with considerable vicious enjoyment--"it isn't a bit of good for them, either. Here"--pointing to the picture again with a stout forefinger--"here they're 'all-handsing'

at the pump. See?"

"No, I don't, and I don't want to," says Mabel, whimpering and hiding her eyes. "Oh, I don't like it; it's a horrid picture! What's that man doing there in the corner?" peeping through her fingers at a dead man in the foreground. "He is dead! I know he is!"

"Of course he is," says Tommy. "And"--valiantly--"I don't care a bit, I don't."

"Oh, but I do," says Mabel. "And there's a lot of water, isn't there?"

"There always is in the sea," says Tommy.

"They'll all be drowned, I know they will," says Mabel, pushing away the book. "Oh, I hate 'handsing'; turn over, Tommy, do! It's a nasty cruel, wicked picture!"

"Tommy, don't frighten Mabel," says his mother anxiously.

"I'm not frightening her. I'm only keeping her quiet," says Tommy defiantly.

"Hah-hah!" says Mr. Courtenay vacuously.

"How wonderfully unpleasant children can make themselves," says Mrs.

Blake, making herself 'wonderfully unpleasant' on the spot. "Your little boy so reminds me of my Reginald. He pulls his sister's hair merely for the fun of hearing her squeal!"

"Tommy does not pull Mabel's hair," says Barbara a little stiffly.

"Tommy, come here to Mr. Browne; he wants to speak to you."

"I want to know if you would like a cat?" says Mr. Browne, drawing Tommy to him.

"I don't want a cat like our cat," says Tommy, promptly. "Ours is so small, and her tail is too thin. Lady Baltimore has a nice cat, with a tail like mamma's furry for her neck."

"Well, that's the very sort of a cat I can get you if you wish."