t was to the effect that the heat of the room had been too much for the
elder Misses Fitzroy, and they had therefore gone home, but as Mr.
Gunning had to pass their gate perhaps he would be kind enough to drive
their niece home.

"Oh--" said Fanny, in tones from which dismay was by no means
eliminated. "How stupid of Aunt Rachel!"

"I'm afraid there seems no way out of it for you," said Rupert
offendedly.

A glimpse of their two wrathful black faces in the glass abruptly
checked Fanny's desire to say something crushing. At this juncture she
would rather have died than laughed.

Burnt cork is not lightly to be removed at the first essay, and when,
half an hour later, Fanny Fitz, with a pale and dirty face, stood under
the dismal light of the lamp outside the Town Hall, waiting for Mr.
Gunning's trap, she had the pleasure of hearing a woman among the
loiterers say compassionately:--

"God help her, the crayture! She looks like a servant that'd be bate out
with work!"

Mr. Gunning's new cob stood hearkening with flickering ears to the
various commotions of the street--she understood them all perfectly
well, but her soul being unlifted by reason of oats, she chose to resent
them as impertinences. Having tolerated with difficulty the instalment
of Miss Fitzroy in the trap, she started with a flourish, and pulled
hard until clear of the town and its flaring public-houses. On the open
road, with nothing more enlivening than the dark hills, half-seen in the
light of the rising moon, she settled down. Rupert turned to his silent
companion. He had become aware during the evening that something was
wrong, and his own sense of injury was frightened into the background.

"What do you think of my new buy?" he said pacifically, "she's a good
goer, isn't she?"

"Very," replied Fanny.

Silence again reigned. One or two further attempts at conversation met
with equal discouragement. The miles passed by. At length, as the mare
slackened to walk up a long hill, Rupert said with a voice that had the
shake of pent-up injury:--

"I've been wondering what I've done to be put into Coventry like this!"

"I thought you probably wouldn't care to speak to me!" was Fanny's
astonishing reply, delivered in tones of ice.

"I!" he stammered, "not care to speak to _you_! You ought to know--"

"Yes, indeed, I do know!" broke in Fanny, passing from the frigid to the
torrid zone with characteristic speed, "I know what a _failure_ your
horse