me to marry
him. No! I don't care what you think. I am miserable! And though I were
to tell you over and over again it was not because of him, you would not
believe me, so I will say nothing."

"Here is Freddy," says Mrs. Monkton, nervously, who has just seen her
husband's head pass the window. He enters the room almost as she speaks.

"Well, Joyce, back again," says he, affectionately. He kisses the girl
warmly. "Horrid drive you must have had through that storm."

"You, too, blame the storm, then, and not me," says Joyce, with a smile.
"Everybody doesn't take your view of it. It appears I should have
returned, in all that rain and wind and----"

"Pshaw! Never listen to extremists," says Mr. Monkton, sinking lazily
into a chair. "They will land you on all sorts of barren coasts if you
give ear to them. For my part I never could see why two people of
opposite sexes, if overcome by nature's artillery, should not spend a
night under a wayside inn without calling down upon them the social
artillery of gossip. There is only one thing in the whole affair," says
Mr. Monkton, seriously, "that has given me a moment's uneasiness."

"And that?" says Joyce, nervously.

"Is how I can possibly be second to both of them. Dysart, I confess, has
my sympathies, but if Beauclerk were to appear first upon the field and
implore my assistance I feel I should have a delicacy about refusing
him."

"Freddy," says his wife, reprovingly.

"Oh, as for that," says Joyce, with a frown, "I do think men are the
most troublesome things on earth." She burst out presently. "When one
isn't loving them, one is hating them."

"How many of them at a time?" asks her brother-in-law with deep
interest. "Not more than two, Joyce, please. I couldn't grasp any more.
My intellect is of a very limited order."

"So is mine, I think," says Joyce, with a tired little sigh.

Monkton, although determined to treat the matter lightly, looks very
sorry for her. Evidently she is out of joint with the whole world at
present.

"How did Lady Baltimore take it?" asks he, with all the careless air of
one asking a question on some unimportant subject.

"She was angry with Mr. Beauclerk for not leaving me at the inn, and
coming home himself."

"Unsisterly woman!"

"She was quite right, after all," says Mrs. Monkton, who had defended
Beauclerk herself, but cannot bear to hear another take his part.

"And, Dysart--how did he take it?" asks Monkton, smiling.

"