Alaric pushed his electric light full into the visitors face, and fell back.

"Good Lord! Jerry!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, completely astonished. "I say, ye know," he went on, "what is happening in this house to-night?"

Jerry came straight down to Mrs. Chichester.

"I saw your lights go up and I came here on the run. I guessed something like this had happened. Don't be hard on your niece, Mrs.

Chichester. The whole thing was entirely my fault. I asked her to go."

Mrs. Chichester looked at him stonily.

"You took my niece to a dance in spite of my absolute refusal to allow her to go?"

"He had nothin' to do with it;" said Peg, "I took him to that dance."

She wasn't going to allow Jerry to be abused without lodging a protest.

After all it was her fault. She made him take her. Very, well--she would take the blame. Mrs. Chichester looked steadily at Jerry for a few moments before she spoke. When she did speak her voice was cold and hard and accusatory.

"Surely, Sir Gerald Adair knows better than to take a girl of eighteen to a public ball without her relations' sanction?"

"I thought only of the pleasure it would give her," he answered.

"Please accept my sincerest apologies."

Peg looked at him in wonder:

"Sir Gerald Adair! Are YOU Sir Gerald Adair?"

"Yes, Peg."

"So ye have a t.i.tle, have yez?"

He did not answer.

Peg felt somehow that she had been cheated. Why had he not told her?

Why did he let her play and romp and joke and banter with him as though they had been children and equals? It wasn't fair! He was just laughing, at her! Just laughing at her! All her spirit was in quick revolt.

"Do you realise what you have done?" broke in Mrs. Chichester.

"I'm just beginning to," replied Peg bitterly.

"I am ashamed of you! You have disgraced us all!" cried Mrs. Chichester.

"Have I?" screamed Peg fiercely. "Well, if I HAVE then I am goin' back to some one who'd never be ashamed o' me, no matter what I did. Here I've never been allowed to do one thing I've wanted to. He lets me do EVERYTHING I want because he loves and trusts me an' whatever I do is RIGHT because _I_ do it. I've disgraced ye, have I? Well, none of you can tell me the truth. I'm goin' back to me father."

"Go back to your father and glad we are to be rid of you!" answered Mrs. Chichester furiously.

"I am goin' back to him--"

Before she could say anything further, Ethel suddenly rose unsteadily and cried out:

"Wait, mother! She mustn't go. We have all been grossly unfair to her.

It is _I_ should go. To-night she saved me from--she saved me from--"

suddenly Ethel reached the breaking-point; she slipped from Peg's arms to the chair and on to the floor and lay quite still.

Peg knelt down beside her:

"She's fainted. Stand back--give her air--get some water, some smelling-salts--quick--don't stand there lookin' at her: do somethin'!"

Peg loosened Ethel's dress and talked to her all the while, and Jerry and Alaric hurried out in different directions in quest of restoratives.

Mrs. Chichester came toward Ethel, thoroughly alarmed and upset.

But Peg would not let her touch the inanimate girl.

"Go away from her!" cried Peg hysterically.

"What good do ye think ye can do her? What do you know about her? You don't know anything about yer children--ye don't know how to raise them. Ye don't know a thought in yer child's mind. Why don't ye sit down beside her sometimes and find out what she, thinks and who she sees? Take her hand in yer own and get her to open her soul to ye! Be a mother to her! A lot you know about motherhood! I want to tell ye me father knows more about motherhood than any man in the wurrld."

Poor Mrs. Chichester fell back, crushed and humiliated from Peg's onslaught.

In a few moments the two men returned with water and salts. After a while Ethel opened her eyes and looked up at Peg. Peg, fearful lest she should begin to accuse herself again, helped her up the stairs to her own room and there she sat beside the unstrung, hysterical girl until she slept, her hand locked in both of Peg's.

Promising to call in the morning, Jerry left.

The mother and son returned to their rooms.

The house was still again.

But how much had happened that night that went to shaping the characters and lives of these two young girls, who were first looking out at life with the eyes and minds of swiftly advancing womanhood! One thing Peg had resolved: she would not spend another night in the Chichester home.

Her little heart was bruised and sore. The night had begun so happily: it had ended so wretchedly.

And to think the one person in whom she trusted had been just amusing himself with her, leading her to believe he was a farmer--"less than that" he had once said, and all the time he was a man of breeding and of birth and of t.i.tle.

Poor Peg felt so humiliated that she made up her mind she would never see him again.

In the morning she would go back to the one real affection of her life--to the min who never hurt or disappointed her--her father.

CHAPTER XII

A ROOM IN NEW YORK

We will now leave Peg for a while and return to one who claimed so much of the reader's attention in the early pages of this history--O'Connell.

It had not been a happy month for him.