'Perhaps it's prejudice,' said Mrs. Langton, 'but I do _not_ think I
should like to be called by an _idiot_; he might turn into a maniac
some day. They do quite suddenly at times, don't they?' she added,
appealing to the professor, 'and that wouldn't be _nice_, you know, if
he did. What _would_ you do?' she inquired generally.

'Shouldn't get up,' said a rising young barrister.

'_I_ should--under the bed, and scream,' said the lively young lady he
had taken down. And so for some minutes that end of the table applied
itself zealously to solving the difficult problem of the proper course
to take on being called early by a raving maniac.

Meanwhile Mabel had succeeded in dropping poor Mr. Pidgely and
resuming conversation with Mark; this time on ordinary topics--pictures,
books, theatres, and people (especially people); he talked well, and
the sympathy between them increased.

Then as the dessert was being taken round, Dolly and Colin came in.
'_I've_ had ices, Mabel,' said the latter confidentially in her ear
as he passed her chair on his way to his mother; but Dolly stole
quietly in and sat down by her father's side without a word.

'Do you notice any difference in my sister Dolly?' Mabel asked Mark,
with a little anxious line on her forehead.

'She is not looking at all well,' said Mark, following the direction
of her glance. There certainly was a change in Dolly; she had lost all
her usual animation, and sat there silent and constrained, leaving the
delicacies with which her father had loaded her plate untouched, and
starting nervously whenever he spoke to her. When good-natured Mr.
Pidgely displayed his one accomplishment of fashioning a galloping pig
out of orange-peel for her amusement, she seemed almost touched by his
offering, instead of slightly offended, as the natural Dolly would
have been.

'I don't think she is ill,' said Mabel, 'though I was uneasy about
that at first. Fraeulein and I fancy she must be worrying herself about
something, but we can't get her to say what it is, and I don't like to
tease her; very likely she is afraid of being laughed at if she tells
anybody. But I do so wish I could find out; children can make
themselves so terribly wretched over mere trifles sometimes.'

But the hour of 'bereavement,' as Mr. Du Maurier calls it, had come;
gloves were being drawn on, the signal was given. Mr. Pidgely, after
first carefully barricading the path on his side of the table with his
cha