w, was far from wishing to bring him to a sense of his
duty before the evening was over, so smiled as engagingly as ever, and
continued to accept his attentions, till Janet, fizzing in high dudgeon,
announced her intention of going home, which, of course, involved the
escort of her recreant young man.

"Wait here a quarter of an hour," whispered Alec to Bluebell, "and I will
run back and row you home."

"Gracious, no!" said she, with rather the sensation of a child who has
been sent out to spend the afternoon and has misbehaved. "Here is Mrs.
Rolleston's servant come for me. Go back with Miss Janet and make it up,
for I am never going to speak to you again,"--and she turned away to make
her adieux to Mrs. Palmer, a motherly-looking old lady, who had been
nodding half asleep on the sofa all the time.

"Such a charming musical evening--such a treat!" said she, brisking up,
and quite unaware of what had been passing round her the last two hours.

"Miss Leigh was quite untireable," sneered Janet. "One could not have
_asked_ her to exert herself so much."

"Must you really go?" interposed Crickey, fearing now the music was over
the harmony might cease also.

Bluebell pleaded a promise to return early.

"I am sorry to be the means of taking away any attraction that might have
induced you to stay," put in Janet, determined to give her "one" before
she went.

"Thank you," said Bluebell, sweetly, declining to understand; "but I
could scarcely expect you to stay to amuse me."

"That, I feel sure, would be quite out of my power!" said the other, bent
on provocation; and Crickey nervously dragged Bluebell away to get her
hat.

Alec lingered till she was fairly off, fearing that Bernard would try and
escort her home. He, however, was thoroughly sulky at the way Gough had
monopolized her the whole evening, and was quite as ready as Coey to
pronounce her an arrant flirt; which so mollified the latter, that when,
a few days later, she and her sister were asked to return Bluebell's
visit at Lyndon's Landing, she accepted without the slightest hesitation,
in a perfectly charitable frame of mind.

Alec and Janet, of course, quarrelled going home; but it being not the
first time by a good many, it blew over without a rupture, the gentleman,
for the future, cautiously avoiding Bluebell's name, though he tried all
he knew to meet her alone, in which respect Fortune did not favour him;
and there being no more efficient chaperons