w she can forbid my
coming here now, do you?"

"No, of course she can't. And oh, Tommy, I have missed you! Are you at
Golden Square to-night?"

"Yes. Coming to supper?"

"I think so. Good-bye, you darling little boy."

After he had closed the door, Tommy pounded on it until she opened it.

"I say, Bicky, what happens to ambassadors who fail in their missions?"
he asked, winking delightedly.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Yellow Dog Papillon lay asleep on the Chesterfield in Joyselle's room.
He was dreaming an enchanting dream about a particularly aromatic bone
that he found in a dust-bin--a ham-bone slashed by a careless hand and
cast away before all meat had been removed from it--a bone for which any
dog would have risked much.

So it was tiresome to be awakened by a sound of low voices.

Opening one eye warily Yellow Dog Papillon looked up and saw something
he had of late seen several times, his beloved master standing by the
Girl Who Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat.

The girl had water in her eyes, too.

"I am very sorry, Victor," she was saying, "but I cannot, and will not.
I can't see why you should care."

"But I do care. You know that I have always hated it. And Tommy told me
himself that she let him go with the express purpose of making up with
you. It is your duty to go back."

She drew away from him.

"I cannot."

"You mean you will not."

"Exactly; I will not."

Yellow Dog did not understand all of this dialogue, but he knew his
master's face as well as his voice, and because he liked the Girl Who
Had Sometimes Just Come from a Cat, he would have liked to advise her to
lay down her arms at once. "No good opposing him when his eyes are like
that," he said to himself; "if it was _me_, I'd just sit up and beg and
make him laugh."

But Brigit would not condescend to sit up and beg.

"There's no use in discussing it," she said very coldly, "for I will not
go back."

Joyselle watched her in silence for a long time. "Not even if I entreat
you?" he asked in a gentle voice.

Her lips tightened, for tenderness with coercion behind it had no
delusions for her.

"Not even if you entreat me. I have told you that I dislike my mother
and I do not wish to see her. I will not tell you why, and that, at
least, you ought to approve of."

"It is horrible for a daughter to say that she does not like her
mother----"

"It is horrible for me not to like her, but I can't help it. And it is
not horrib