t she marched out of the room, while her father again
laughed, and said, 'Have they been training her for the tragic stage?
Never mind, Edda, the little vixen will come to her senses upstairs,
and be begging to go.'

'I don't think she will,' said Alice sadly; 'she is not that sort of
stuff, and she was very fond of Mrs. Nugent. Oh, Alwyn! if you could
let us off.'

'Not after that explosion, certainly,' he said. 'Besides, I promised
Jerningham, and such an excuse would never hold water. She is not even
a relation.'

'No, but she was very good to me.'

'The more reason why you should not stay at home and be hipped. Never
mind that silly girl. She will be all right by and by.'

On the contrary, she did not come down to luncheon, and when, about an
hour later, Alice, after writing a few tender loving words to the
mourners, went up to her daughter's room, it was to find a limp and
deplorable figure lying across the bed, and to be greeted with a fresh
outburst of sobs and inarticulate exclamations.

'Oh, Nuttie, dear, this will not do! It is not right. Dear good Mrs.
Nugent herself would tell you that this is not the way any one so good
and so suffering should be grieved for. Think--'

'Oh, I know all that!' cried Nuttie, impatiently; 'but she--she was the
dearest--and nobody cares for her but me. Not even you--'

Again Alice tried to debate the point, and urge on her the duties of
moderation, self-control, and obedience, but the poor gentle mother was
at a great disadvantage.

In the first place, she respected and almost envied her daughter's
resistance, and really did not know whether it was timidity or
principle that made it her instinct to act otherwise; in the next,
Ursula could always talk her down; and, in the third, she was, and
greatly she reproached herself for that same, in great dread of setting
herself off into tears that might become hysterical if she once gave
way to them. And what would be her husband's feelings if she too
collapsed and became unpresentable.

So, having once convinced herself that even if Nuttie had been a
consenting party, no amount of cold water and eau-de-cologne would
bring those bloodshot eyes, swollen lids, and mottled cheeks to be fit
to be seen, she fled as fast as possible from the gasps of barbed
reproaches which put her own composure in peril, and dressed with the
heaviest of hearts, coupled with the utmost solicitude to look her
best. If she had not thought