The two sisters were silent, perhaps from sheer amazement at this outbreak of Gillian's, who had never seemed particularly fond of her cousin. Gillian was quite as much surprised at herself, but something seemed to drive her on, with flaming cheeks. 'Dolores is half broken-hearted about it all. She did not thoroughly know how wrong it was; and it does make her miserable that the one who went along with her in it should turn against her, and cut her and all.'

'Connie never meant to keep it up, I'm sure,' said Miss Hacket; 'but she was very much hurt.'

'So was Dolly,' said Gillian.

'Is she so fond of me?' said Constance, in a softened tone.

'She was,' replied Gillian.

'I'm sure,' said Miss Hacket, 'our only wish is to forget and forgive as Christians. Lady Merrifield has behaved most handsomely, and it is our most earnest wish that this unfortunate transaction should be forgotten.'

'And I'm sure I'm willing to overlook it all,' said Constance. 'One must have sc.r.a.pes, you know; but friendship will triumph over all.'

Gillian did not exactly wish to unravel this fine sentiment, and was glad that the little G.F.S. maid came in with the tea.

Lady Merrifield was a good deal diverted with Gillian's report, and invited the two sisters to luncheon on the plea of their slight acquaintance with Anne--otherwise Mrs. Daventry--with a hint in the note not to compliment Mrs. Merrifield on Elizabeth's production.

Then Dolores had to be prepared to receive any advance from Constance.

She looked disgusted at first, and then, when she heard that Gillian had spoken her mind, said, 'I can't think why you should care.'

'Of course I care, to have Constance behaving so ill to one of us.'

'Do you think me one of you, Gillian?'

'Who, what else are you?'

And Dolores held up her face for a kiss, a heartier one than had ever pa.s.sed between the cousins. There was no kiss between the quondam friends, but they shook hands with perfect civility, and no stranger would have guessed their former or their present terms from their manner. In fact, Constance was perfectly absorbed in the contemplation of the successful auth.o.r.ess, the object of her envy and veneration, and only wanted to forget all the unpleasantness connected with the dark head on the opposite side of the table.

'Oh Miss Merrifield,' she asked, in an interval afterwards, when hats were being put on, 'bow do you make them take your things?'

'I don't know,' said Bessie, smiling. 'I take all the pains I can, and try to make them useful.'

'Useful, but that's so dull--and the critics always laugh at things with a purpose.'

'But I don't think that is a reason for not trying to do good, even in this very small and uncertain way. Indeed,' she added, earnestly. 'I have no right to speak, for I have made great mistakes; but I wanted to tell you that the one thing I did get published, which was not written conscientiously--as I may say--but only to work out a silly, sentimental fancy, has brought me pain and punishment by the harm I know I did.'

This was a very new idea to Constance, and she actually carried it away with her. The visit had restored the usual terms of intercourse with the Hackets, though there was no resumption of intimacy such as there had been, between Constance and Dolores. It had, however, done much to make the latter feel that the others considered themselves one with them, and there was something that drew them together in the universal missing of Mysie, and eagerness for her letters.

These were, however, rather disappointing. Mysie had not a genius for correspondence, and dealt in very bare facts. There was an enclosure which made Lady Merrifield somewhat anxious:

'My Dear Mamma, 'This is for you all by yourself. I have been in sad mischief, for I broke the conservatory and a palm-tree with my umbrella; and I did still worse, for I broke my promise and told all about what you told me never to. I will tell you all when I come home, and I hope you will forgive me. I wish I was at home. It is very horrid when they say one is good and one knows one is not; but I am very happy, and Lord Rotherwood is nicer than ever, and so is Fly. 'I am your affectionate and penitent and dutiful little daughter,

'MARIA MILLICENT MERRIFIELD.'

With all mamma's intuitive knowledge of her little daughter's mind and forms of expression, she was puzzled by this note and the various fractures it described. She obeyed its injunctions of secrecy, even with regard to Gillian and Bessie, though she could not help wishing that the latter could have seen and judged of her Mysie.

Grandmamma was somewhat disappointed to have missed her eldest grandson, but she was obliged to leave Silverton two days before his return with his little sister. She had certainly escaped the full tumult of the entire household, but Bessie observed that she suspected that it might have been preferred to the general quiescence.

In spite of all the regrets that Bessie's more coeval cousins, Alethea and Phyllis were not at home, she and her aunt each felt that a new friendship had been made, and that they understood each other, and Bessie had uttered her resolution henceforth always to think of the impression for good or evil produced on the readers, as well as of the effectiveness of her story. 'Little did I suppose that 'Clare' would add to any one's difficulties,' she said, 'still less to yours, Aunt Lilias.'

CHAPTER XX. -- CONFESSIONS OF A COUNTRY MOUSE.

Here were the travellers at home again, and Mysie clinging to her mother, with, 'Oh, Mamma!' and a look of perfect rest. They arrived at the same time as Dolores had come, so late that Mysie was tired out, and only half awake. She was consigned to Mrs. Halfpenny after her first kiss, but as she pa.s.sed along the corridor, a door was thrown back, and a white figure sprang upon her. 'Oh, Mysie! Mysie!' and in spite of the nurse's chidings, held her fast in an embrace of delight. Dolores had been lying awake watching for her, and implored permission at least to look on while she was going to bed!

Harry meanwhile related his experiences to his mother and Gillian over the supper-table. The b.u.t.terfly's Ball had been a great success. He had never seen anything prettier in his life. Plants and lights had been judiciously disposed so as to make the hall a continuation of the conservatory, almost a fairy land, and the children in their costumes had been more like fairies than flesh and blood, pinafore and bread-and-b.u.t.ter beings. There was a most perfect tableau at the opening of the scenery constructed with moss and plants, so as to form a bower, where the b.u.t.terfly and Gra.s.shopper, with their immediate attendants, welcomed their company, and afterwards formed the first quadrille, Lady Phyllis, with Mysie and two other little girls staying in the house, being the b.u.t.terflies, and Lord Ivinghoe and three more boys of the same ages, the gra.s.shoppers, in pages' dresses of suitable colours.

'I never thought,' said Harry, 'that our little brown mouse would come out so pretty or so swell.'

'She wanted to be the dormouse,' said Gillian.

'That was impracticable. They were all heath b.u.t.terflies of different sorts, wings very correctly coloured and dresses to correspond. Phyllis the ringlet with the blue lining, Mysie, the blue one, little Lady Alberta, the orange-tip, and the other child the burnet moth.'

'How did Mysie dance?'

'Very fairly, if she had not looked so awfully serious. The dancing-mistress, French, of course, had trained them, it was more ballet than quadrille, and they looked uncommonly pretty. Uncle William granted that, though he grumbled at the whole concern as nonsense, and wondered you should send your nice little girl into it to have her head turned.'

'Do you think she was happy?'

'Oh, yes, of course. She always is, but she was in prodigious spirits when we started to come home. Lady Rotherwood said I was to tell you that no child could be more truthful and conscientious. Still somehow she did not look like the swells. Except that once, when she was got up regardless of expense for the ball, she always had the country mouse look about her. She hadn't--'

'The 'Jenny Say Caw,' as Macrae calls it?' said his mother. 'Well, I can endure that! You need not look so disgusted, Gill. You didn't hear of her getting into any sc.r.a.pe, did you?'

'No,' said Hal. 'Stay, I believe she did break some gla.s.s or other, and blurted out her confession in full a.s.sembly, but I was over at Beechcroft, and I am happy to say I didn't see her.'

Mysie's tap came early to her mother's door the next morning, and it was in the midst of her toilette that Lady Merrifield was called on to hear the confession that had been weighing on the little girl's mind.

'I was too sleepy to tell you last night, mamma, but I did want to do so.'

'Well, then, my dear, begin at the beginning, for I could not understand your letter.'

'The beginning was, mamma, that we had just come in from our walk, and we went out into the schoolroom balcony, because we could see round the corner who was coming up the drive. And we began playing at camps, with umbrellas up as tents. Ivinghoe, and Alberta, and I. Ivy was general, and I was the sentry, with my umbrella shut up, and over my shoulder. I was the only one who knew how to present arms. I heard something coming, and called out, 'Who goes there?' and Alberta jumped up in such a hurry that the points other tent--her umbrella, I mean--scratched my face, and before I could recover arms, over went my umbrella, perpendicular, straight smash through the gla.s.s of the conservatory, and we heard it.'

'And what did you do? Of course you told!'

"Oh yes! I jumped up and said, 'I'll go and tell Lady Rotherwood.' I knew I must before I got into a fright, and Ivinghoe said I couldn't then, and he would speak to his mother and make it easy for me, and Ply says he really meant it; but I thought then that's the way the bad ones always get the others into concealments and lies. So I wouldn't listen a moment, and I ran down, with him after me, saying, 'Hear reason, Mysie.'

And I ran full b.u.t.t up against some-body--Lord Ormersfield it was, I found--but I didn't know then. I only said something about begging pardon, and dashed on, and opened the door. I saw a whole lot of fine people all at five-o'clock tea, but I couldn't stop to get more frightened, and I went up straight to Lady Rotherwood and said, 'Please, I did it.' Mamma do you think I ought not?"

'There are such things as fit places and times, my dear. What did she say?'

"At first she just said, 'My dear, I cannot attend to you now, run away;' but then in the midst, a thought seemed to strike her, and she said, rather frightened, 'Is any one hurt?' and I said, Oh no; only my umbrella has gone right through the roof of the conservatory, and I thought I ought to come and tell her directly. 'That was the noise,'

said some of the people, and everybody got up and went to look. And there were Fly and Ivy, who had got in some other way, and the umbrella was sticking right upright in the top of one of those palm-trees with leaves like screens, and somebody said it was a new development of fruit. Lady Rotherwood asked them what they were doing there, and Ivy said they had come to see what harm was done. Dear Fly ran up to her and said, 'We were all at play together, mother; it was not one more than another;' but Lady Rotherwood only said, 'That's enough, Phyllis, I will come to you by-and-by in the schoolroom,' and she would have sent us away if Cousin Rotherwood himself had not come in just then, and asked what was the matter. I heard some of the answers; they were very odd, mamma. One was, 'A storm of umbrellas and of untimely confessions;' and another was, 'Truth in undress.'"