forgotten the child--the
book--everything, even the fear of observation, and her eyes are heavy
with unshed tears, and her hands are trembling.

Then the child's questioning voice comes to her; across the bridge of
past years she has been vainly trying to travel, and perforce she gives
up her impossible journey, and returns to the sure but sorry present.

Involuntarily she tightens her hand upon the Boodie's. There is entreaty
in her pressure, and the child (children, as a rule, are very
sympathetic), after a second stare at her, shorter than the first,
understands, in a vague fashion, that silence is implored of her, and
makes no further attempts at investigation.

After a little while the men come; all except Fabian. Their entrance is
a relief to the girls, whatever it may be to Julia. She rouses herself
by a supreme effort to meet the exigencies of the moment, and really
succeeds in looking quite as if she has not been in the land of Nod for
the past sweet thirty minutes.

"You have broken in upon a really delicious little bit of gossip," she
says to Sir Mark, coquettishly; whereupon Sir Mark, as in duty bound,
entreats her to retail it again to him.

She doesn't.

"I hope you have been miserable without us," says Dicky Browne, sinking
into a chair beside Portia, and lifting the Boodie on to his knee. (It
would be impossible to Dicky Browne to see a child anywhere without
lifting it on to his knee). "We've been wretched in the dining-room; we
thought Sir Christopher would never tip us the wink--I mean," correcting
himself with assumed confusion, "give us the word to join you. What are
you looking at? An album?"

"Yes; you may look at it, too," says Portia, pushing it anxiously
towards him. She cannot talk to-night. There is a mental strain upon her
brain that compels her to silence. If he would only amuse himself with
the caricatures of his friends the book contains.

But he won't. Mr. Browne rises superior to the feeble amusements of the
ordinary drawing-room.

"No, thank you," he says, promptly. "Nothing on earth offends me more
than being asked to look at an album. Why look at paper beauties when
there are living ones in the room?"

Here he tries to look sentimental, and succeeds, at all events, in
looking extremely funny. He has been having a good deal of champagne,
and a generous amount of Burgundy, and is now as happy and contented as
even his nearest and dearest could desire. Don't mistake me for a