ully nice! She is a pleasant deceit. 'She has no winsome
looks, no pretty frowning,' I grant you; but she can hold her own, and
is _so_ good-humored."

"What a lovely night!" says Monica, gazing wistfully into the misty
depths of the illuminated darkness beyond. "I want to step into it,
and--we have not been out all day."

"Then why not go now?" says Hermia, answering her glance in a kindly
spirit.

"Ah! _will_ you come?" says Monica, brightening into glad excitement.

"Let us go as far as the fountain in the lower garden," says Olga: "it
is always beautiful there when the moon is up."

"Avoid the grass, however; wet feet are dangerous," says Lord Rossmoyne,
carefully.

"You will die an old bachelor," retorts Olga, saucily, "if you take so
much 'thought for the morrow.'"

"It will certainly not be my fault if I do," returns Rossmoyne, calmly,
but with evident meaning.

"Mrs. Bohun, bring your guitar," says Desmond, "and we will make Ronayne
sing to it, and so imagine ourselves presently in the land of the olive
and the palm."

"Shall we ask the others to come with us?" says Monica, kindly, glancing
back into the drawing-room.

"Miss Browne, for example," suggests Owen Kelly. If he hopes by this
speech to arouse jealousy in anybody present, he finds himself, later
on, mightily mistaken.

"If she is as good a sort as you say, I daresay she would like it," says
Olga. "And, besides, if we leave her to Bella's tender mercies she will
undoubtedly be done to death by the time we return."

"Oh, do go and rescue her," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly. Her
tone is almost appealing.

"Perhaps Miss Fitzgerald will come too," says Monica, somewhat
fearfully.

"Don't be afraid," says Olga. "_Fancy_ Bella running the risk of having
a bad eye or a pink nose in the morning! She knows much better than
that."

"Tell Miss Browne to make haste," says Mrs. Herrick, turning to Kelly.
"Because we are impatient,--we are longing to precipitate ourselves into
the moonlight. Come, Olga; come, Monica; they can follow."

Miss Browne, however, on being appealed to, shows so honest a disregard
for covering of any sort, beyond what decency had already clothed her
with, that she and Kelly catch up with the others even before the
fountain is reached.

It is, indeed, a fairy dell to which they have been summoned,--a magic
circle, closed in by evergreens with glistening leaves. "Dark with
excessive light" appears the scene; the m