f thistle-down or a
snowball, what a heavy foot Mrs. Huntley has! The next moment, I am
disabused. Mrs. Huntley has clearly not moved. It was not _she_ that
scrambled. She is lying back in a deep arm-chair, her silky head gently
denting the flowered cushion, the points of two pretty shoes slightly
advanced toward the fire, and a large feather fan leisurely waving to
and fro, in one white hand. Beyond the _fan_ movement she is not _doing_
any thing that I can detect.

"How do you do?" say I, bustling in, in a hurry to reach the fire. "How
comfortable you look! how cold it is!--Algy!!" For the enigma of the
noise is solved. It was Algy who shuffled and scuffled--yes, scuffled up
from the low stool which he has evidently been sharing with the pretty
shoes--at Mrs. Huntley's feet, on to his long legs, on which he is now
standing, not at all at ease. He does not answer.

"ALGY!" repeat I, in a tone of the profoundest, accentedest surprise,
involuntarily turning my back upon my hostess and facing my brother.

"Well, what about me?" he cries tartly, irritated (and no wonder) by my
open mouth and tragical air.

"What _has_ brought you here?" I ask slowly, and with a tactless
emphasis.

"The fly from the White Hart," he answers, trying to laugh, but looking
confused and angry.

"But I mean--I thought you told me, when I asked you to Tempest this
week, that you could not get away for an _hour_!"

"No more I could," he answers impatiently, yet stammering; "quite
unexpected--did not know when I wrote--have to be back to-night."

"Will not you come nearer the fire?" says Mrs. Huntley, in her slow
sugared tones, with a well-bred ignoring of our squabble. "I am sure
that you must be perished with cold."

I recollect myself and comply. As I sit down I catch a glimpse of myself
in the glass. It is indeed difficult to abstain from the sight of one's
self, however little fond one may be of it, so thickly is the room set
round with rose-draped mirrors. For the moment, O friends, I will own to
you that I appear to myself nothing less than _brutally_ ugly. I know
that I am not so in reality, that the disfigurement is only temporary,
but none the less does the consciousness deeply, deeply depress me. My
nose is of a lively scarlet, which the warmth of the room is quickly
deepening into a lowering purple. My quick passage through the air has
set my hat a little awry, giving me a falsely rakish air, and the wind
has loosened my hair-