utting up her hands to her face, she rises precipitately to her feet,
and then, unable to control herself, bursts into tears.

"Dulce! what is it?" exclaims Portia, going quickly to her, and
encircling her with her arms. Stephen, too, makes a step forward, and
then stops abruptly.

"It is nothing--nothing," sobs Dulce, struggling with her emotion; and
then, finding the conflict vain, and that grief has fairly conquered
her, she lays down her arms, and clinging to Portia, whispers audibly,
with all the unreasoning sorrow of a tired child, "_I want Roger_."

Even as she makes it, the enormity of her confession comes home to her,
and terrifies her. Without daring to cast a glance at Stephen, who is
standing rigid and white as death against the mantelpiece, she slips out
of Portia's arms and escapes from the room.

Another awkward pause ensues. Decidedly this Christmas Eve is not a
successful one. To tell the truth, everyone is very much frightened, and
is wondering secretly how Stephen will take it. When the silence has
become positively unbearable, Sir Mark rises to the situation.

"That is just like Dulce," he says--and really the amount of feigned
amusement he throws into his tone is worthy of all admiration; though to
be quite honest I must confess it imposes upon nobody--"when she is out
of spirits she invariably asks for somebody on whom she is in the habit
of venting her spleen. Poor Roger! he is well out of it to-night, I
think. We have all noticed, have we not," turning, with abject entreaty
in his eyes, to every one in the room except Stephen, "that Dulce has
been very much depressed during the last hour?"

"Yes, we have all noticed that," says Portia, hurriedly, coming nobly to
his assistance.

Dicky Browne, stooping towards her, whispers, softly:

"Quoth Hudibras--'It is in vain,
I see, to argue 'gainst the grain!'"

"I don't understand," says Portia; just because she doesn't want to.

"Don't you?--well, you ought. Can't you see that, in spite of her
determination to hate Roger, she loves him a thousand times better than
that fellow over there?--and I'm very glad of it," winds up Dicky,
viciously, who has always sorely missed Roger, and, though when with him
quarrelled from dawn to dewy eve, he still looks upon him as the one
friend in the world to whom his soul cleaveth.

"Yes, I, too, have noticed her curious silence. Who could have vexed
her! Was it you, Stephen?" asks Julia,