ight before,
on her way down the room stopped and shook hands with Lady Cynthia.

"Why, my dear," she exclaimed, "wherever did you vanish to last night?
Claude told us all that, in the middle of a dance with him, you excused
yourself for a moment and he never saw you again. I quite expected to
read in the papers this morning that you had eloped."

"Precisely what I did," Lady Cynthia declared. "The only trouble was
that my partner had had enough of me before the evening was over,
and deposited me once more in Grosvenor Square. It is really very
humiliating," she went on meditatively, "how every one always returns
me."

"You talk such nonsense, Cynthia!" Lady Torrington exclaimed, a little
pettishly. "However, you found your way home all right?"

"Quite safely, thank you. I was going to write you a note this
afternoon. I went away on an impulse. All I can say is that I am sorry.
Do forgive me."

"Certainly!" was the somewhat chilly reply. "Somehow or other, you seem
to have earned the right to do exactly as you choose. Some of my young
men whom you had promised to dance with, were disappointed, but after
all, I suppose that doesn't matter."

"Not much," Lady Cynthia assented sweetly. "I think a few
disappointments are good for most of the young men of to-day."

"What did you do last night, Cynthia?" Margaret asked her presently,
when Lady Torrington had passed on.

"I eloped with your father," Lady Cynthia confessed, smiling across
at Sir Timothy. "We went for a little drive together and I had a most
amusing time. The only trouble was, as I have been complaining to that
tiresome woman, he brought me home again."

"But where did you go to?" Margaret persisted.

"It was an errand of charity," Sir Timothy declared.

"It sounds very mysterious," Francis observed. "Is that all we are to be
told?"

"I am afraid," Sir Timothy complained, "that very few people sympathise
with my hobbies or my prosecution of them. That is why such little
incidents as last night's generally remain undisclosed. If you really
wish to know what happened," he went on, after a moment's pause, "I will
tell you. As you know, I have a great many friends amongst the boxing
fraternity, and I happened to hear of a man down in the East End who has
made himself a terror to the whole community in which he lives. I took
Peter Fields, my gymnasium instructor, down to the East End last night,
and Peter Fields--dealt with him."

"There was a fight?