terly shortly.

"But where are they? Where did you leave them?"

"We left them on Slogberry Moor," said Vera calmly.

"On Slogberry Moor? Why, it's more than thirty miles away! How are they
going to get back?"

"We didn't stop to consider that," said Skatterly; "we asked them to get
out for a moment, on the pretence that the car had stuck, and then we
dashed off full speed and left them there."

"But how dare you do such a thing? It's most inhuman! Why, it's been
snowing for the last hour."

"I expect there'll be a cottage or farmhouse somewhere if they walk a
mile or two."

"But why on earth have you done it?"

The question came in a chorus of indignant bewilderment.

"_That_ would be telling what our characters are meant to be," said Vera.

"Didn't I warn you?" said Sir Nicholas tragically to his wife.

"It's something to do with Spanish history; we don't mind giving you that
clue," said Skatterly, helping himself cheerfully to salad, and then
Bertie van Tahn broke forth into peals of joyous laughter.

"I've got it! Ferdinand and Isabella deporting the Jews! Oh, lovely!
Those two have certainly won the prize; we shan't get anything to beat
that for thoroughness."

Lady Blonze's Christmas party was talked about and written about to an
extent that she had not anticipated in her most ambitious moments. The
letters from Waldo's mother would alone have made it memorable.

COUSIN TERESA

Basset Harrowcluff returned to the home of his fathers, after an absence
of four years, distinctly well pleased with himself. He was only thirty-
one, but he had put in some useful service in an out-of-the-way, though
not unimportant, corner of the world. He had quieted a province, kept
open a trade route, enforced the tradition of respect which is worth the
ransom of many kings in out-of-the-way regions, and done the whole
business on rather less expenditure than would be requisite for
organising a charity in the home country. In Whitehall and places where
they think, they doubtless thought well of him. It was not
inconceivable, his father allowed himself to imagine, that Basset's name
might figure in the next list of Honours.

Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas,
whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate
futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they
were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he coul