'N-n-o. But it was the same.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'It was to pay a man--a man's that's dead.'

'That may be; but what right did that give you to spend the money otherwise? Who was the man?'

'Professor Muhlwa.s.ser, for some books of plates.'

'How do you know he is dead! Who told you so? Eh! Was it Flinders? Ah!

you see what comes of trusting to an unprincipled man like that. If you had only been open and straightforward with Aunt Lily, or with any of us, you would have been saved from this tissue of falsehood; forfeiting your Uncle Reginald's good opinion, and enabling Flinders to do your father this great injury.' She paused, and, as Dolores made no answer, she went on again--'Indeed, there is no saying what you have not brought on yourself by your deceit and disobedience. If Flinders is apprehended, you will have to appear against him in court, and publicly avow that you gave away what your father trusted to you.'

Dolores gave a little moan and start, and her aunt, perceiving that she had touched an apparently vulnerable spot, proceeded--'The only thing left for you to do is to tell the whole story frankly and honestly. I don't say so only for the sake of showing Aunt Lily that you are sorry for having abused her confidence. I wish I could think that you are; but, unless we know all, we cannot shield you from any further consequences, and that of course we should wish to do, for your father's sake.'

Dolores did not feel drawn to confession, but she knew that when Aunt Jane once set herself to ask questions, there was no use in trying to conceal anything. So she made answers, chiefly 'Yes' or No,' and her aunt, by severe and diligent pumping, had extracted bit by bit what it was most essential should be known, before the gong summoned them.

Dolores would rather have been a solitary prisoner, able to chafe against oppression, than have been obliged to come down and confront everybody; but she crept into the place left for her between Mysie and Wilfred. She had very little appet.i.te, and never found out how Mysie was fulfilling her resolution of kindness by baulking Wilfred of sundry attempts to tease; by subst.i.tuting her own kissing-crust for Dolly's more unpoetical piece of bread; and offering to exchange her delicious strawberry-jam tartlet for the black-currant one at which her cousin was looking with reluctant eyes.

Mysie and Valetta were grievously exercised about their chances of returning to the G.F.S. Tree. Indeed Gillian went the length of telling them that Fly was behaving far better in her disappointment as to the b.u.t.terfly's Ball than they were as to this 'old second-hand tree.' Fly laughed and observed, 'Dear me, things one would like are always being stopped. If one was to mind every time, how horrid it would be! And there's always something to make up!'

Then it occurred to Gillian, though not to her younger sisters, that Lady Phyllis Devereux lived in general a much less indulged, and more frequently disappointed, life than did herself and her sisters.

However, there was great delight at that dinner-table. Jasper had ridden to get the letters of the second post, and Lord Rotherwood had his hands and his head full of them when he came in to luncheon--there being what Lady Merrifield called a respectable dinner in view. In the first place.

Lord Ivinghoe was getting on very well, and was up, sitting by the fire, playing patience. n.o.body was catching the measles, and quarantine would be over on the 9th of January. Secondly, 'Fly, shall you be very broken-hearted if I tell you.'

'Oh, daddy, you wouldn't look like that if it was anything very bad!

Lion isn't dead?'

'No; but I grieve to say your unnatural grand-parents don't want you!

Grandmamma is nervous about having you without mamma. What did we do last time we were there, Fly?'

'Don't you remember, daddy? they said there was nothing for me to ride to the meet, and you and Griffin put the side-saddle on Crazy Kate, and we went out with the hounds, and I've got the brush up in my room!'

'I don't wonder grandmamma is nervous,' observed Lady Merrifield.

'Will you be nervous, Lily,' said Lord Rotherwood, 'if this same flyaway mortal is left on your hands till the 9th?'

Dinner, manners, silence before company, and all, could not repress a general scream of ecstacy, which called forth the reply. 'I should think you and her mother were the people to be nervous.

'Oh! my lady has been duly instructed in Merrifield perfections, and esteems you a model mother.'

The children's nods and smiles said 'Hear, hear!'

'Well, you've got it all in her own letter,' continued Lord Rotherwood.

'You see, they've got a caucus at High Court, and a dinner, and I must go up there on Monday; but if you'll keep this dangerous Fly--'

'I can answer for the pleasure it will give,'

'Well then, I'll come back for her by the 9th, and you've Victoria's letter, haven't you?'

'Yes, it is very kind of her.'

'Then I shall expect you to be ready to start with me for the b.u.t.terfly's Ball. Eh, young ladies, what will you come out as?'

'Oh daddy, daddy, is it? Has mamma asked them? Oh! it is more delicious than anything ever was. Mysie, Mysie, what will you be?'

'The sly little dormouse crept out of his hole,' quoted Mysie, in a very low, happy voice.

'And I will be a jolly old frog,' shouted Fergus, finding the ordinance of silence broken and making the most of it, on the presumption that the whole family were invited. However, the tone, rather than the uncomprehended words of his mother's answer, 'n.o.body asked you, sir,'

she said, reduced him to silence, and it became understood, through Fly's inquiries, that the invitation included Lady Merrifield must make her acceptance doubtful. And besides, the question which three were to go was the unspoken drawback to full bliss, and yet the delight was exceedingly great in the prospect, great enough to make the contrast of gloom in poor Dolores's spirit all the darker, as she sat, left out of everything, and she could not now say, with absolute injustice, though she still clung to the belief that there was more misfortune than fault in her disgrace.

She crept away, shivering with unhappiness, to the schoolroom, while the others frisked off discussing the wonderful b.u.t.terfly's Ball. Lady Merrifield looked in on her, and she hardened herself to endure either another probing or fresh reproaches, but all she heard was, 'My dear, I cannot talk over this sad affair now, as I have to go out. But, if you can, I think you had better write to your father about it, and let him understand exactly how it happened. Or, if you had rather write than speak in explaining it to me, you can do so, and we can consider tomorrow what is to be done about it.'

Then she went out with her brother and cousin to drive to some Industrial schools which Lord Rotherwood wanted to see.

CHAPTER XV. -- THE b.u.t.tERFLY'S BALL.

Miss Mohun went to the Cas.e.m.e.nt Cottages with Gillian to see what the elder Miss Hacket might wish and whether they could be of use to her; the young people being left to exercise themselves within call in case the Tree was to be continued.

This proved to be an act of great kindness, for poor Mary Hacket was suffering all the distress of an upright and honourable woman at her sister's abuse of confidence; and had felt as if Colonel Mohun's summons to his nieces was the close of all intimacy with such an unworthy household. Moreover, the evenings entertainment could not be given up and Gillian was despatched to summon the eager a.s.sistants, while Aunt Jane repeated her a.s.surances that Lady Merrifield perfectly understood Miss Hacket's ignorance of the doings in Constance's room--listening patiently even when the tender-hearted woman began to excuse her sister for having accepted Dolores's lamentations at being cut off from her so-called uncle. 'Dear Connie is so romantic, and so easily touched,'

she said, 'though, of course, it was very wrong of her to suppose that Lady Merrifield could do anything harsh or unkind. She is in great grief now, poor darling, she feels so bitterly that her friend led her into it by deceiving her about the relationship and character.'

This, Aunt Jane did not think the worst part of the affair, and she said that the girl had been brought up to call the man Uncle Alfred, and very possibly did not understand that he was only so by courtesy, nor that he was so utterly untrustworthy.

'I thought so,' said Mary Hacket. 'I told Connie that such a child could not possibly have been a willing party to his fraud--for fraud, I fear, it was--Miss Mohun. Do you think there is any hope of her recovering the sum she advanced.'

'I am afraid there is not, even if the wretched man is apprehended.'

'Ah! if she had only told me what she wanted it for!'

'I hope it was all her own.'

'Oh, Miss Mohun, no doubt you know that two sisters living together must accommodate one another a little, and Connie's dress expenses, at her age, are necessarily more than mine. But here come the dear children, and we ought to dismiss all painful subjects, though I declare I am so nervous I hardly know what I am about.'

However, by Miss Mohun's help, the good lady rose to the occasion, and when once busy, the trouble was thrown off, so that no guests would have detected how unhappy she had been in the forenoon. Constance soon came down, and confided to Gillian a parcel directed to Miss D. Mohun, containing all the notes written to her, and all the books lent to her, by the false friend whom she had cast off, after which she threw herself into the interests of the present.

The London ornaments, and the residue of the gifts and bonbons, made the Christmas-tree a most memorable one to the G.F.S. mind.

As to Fly, she fraternized to a great extent with a very small maid, in a very long, brown dress, and very thick boots, who did not taste a single bonbon, and being asked whether she understood that they were good to eat, replied that she was keeping them for 'our Bertie and Minnie;' and, on encouragement, launched into such a description of her charges--the blacksmith's small children--that Lady Phyllis went back, not without regrets that she could not be a little nurse who had done with school at twelve years old, and spent her days at the back of a perambulator.

'Oh, daddy,' she said, 'I do wish you had come down; it was such lovely fun--the best tree I ever saw. Why wouldn't you come?'

'If thirty odd years should pa.s.s over that little head of yours, my Lady Fly, and you should then meet with Mysie and Val, maybe you will then learn the reason why.'