sing and running to the glass, and pushing back
her disordered hair from her face, that is lovely in spite of marring
tears--"to-morrow I shall be gayer, brighter than he has ever yet seen
me. What! shall I let him think I fret because of him! He saw me once
in tears; he shall not see me so again."

"What a pity it is that grief should be so unbecoming!" says Cecil,
laughing. "I always think what a guy Niobe must have been if she was
indeed all tears."

"The worst thing about crying, I think," says Molly, "is the fatal
desire one feels to blow one's nose: that is the horrid part of it. I
knew I was looking odious all the time I was weeping over my ring, and
that added to my discomfort. By the bye, Cecil, what were you doing at
the table with a pencil just before we broke up to-night? Sir Penthony
was staring at you fixedly all through,--wondering, I am sure, at your
occupation, as, to tell the truth, was I."

"Nothing very remarkable. I was inditing a 'sonnet to your eyebrow,' or
rather to your lids, they were so delicately tinted, and so much in
unison with the extreme dejection of your entire bearing. I confess,
unkind as it may sound, they moved me to laughter. Ah! that reminds
me," says Cecil, her expression changing to one of comical terror, as
she starts to her feet, "Plantagenet came up at the moment, and lest he
should see my composition I hid it within the leaves of the
blotting-book. There it is still, no doubt. What shall I do if any one
finds it in the morning? I shall be read out of meeting, as I have an
indistinct idea that, with a view to making you laugh, I rather
caricatured every one in the room, more or less."

"Shall I run down for it?" says Molly. "I won't be a moment, and you
are quite undressed. In the blotting-book, you said? I shan't be any
time."

"Unless the ghosts detain you."

"Or, what would be much worse, any of our friends."

CHAPTER XXVI.

"A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Poured on one side.

* * *

Half light, half shade,
She stood, a sight to make an old man young."

--_Gardener's Daughter._

Thrusting her little bare feet into her slippers, she takes up a candle
and walks softly down the stairs, past the smoking and billiard-rooms,
into the drawing-room, where the paper has been left.

All the lamps have been extinguished, leaving the apartment, which is
immense, steeped in darkness. Coming into it fro