an pulling
Mrs. Lee towards the door.

"Oh," panted Mrs. Lee, "anything except being caught up-stairs in
their bedrooms! They might think--anything."

"Hurry!" hissed Mrs. Van Dorn. They could hear the footsteps very
distinctly, and the cigar-smoke made them want to cough. Holding
their silk skirts like twisted ropes around them so they should not
rustle, still clinging closely one to the other, the two women began
slowly moving, inch by inch, through the upper hall, towards the back
stairs. These they descended in safety, and emerged on the lower hall.

They were looking for a rear door, with the view of a stealthy egress
and a skirting of the bushes on the lawn unobserved until they should
gain the shelter of the carriage, when there was a movement at their
backs, and a voice observed, "Good-afternoon, ladies," and they
turned, and there was Captain Arthur Carroll. He was a man possibly
well over forty, possibly older than that, but his face was as smooth
as a boy's, and he was a man of great stature, with nevertheless a
boyish cant to his shoulders. Captain Arthur Carroll was a very
handsome man, with a viking sort of beauty. He was faultlessly
dressed in one of the lightest of spring suits and a fancy waistcoat,
and he held quite gracefully the knot of violets which had fallen
from Mrs. Van Dorn's bonnet.

The two stood before him, gasping, coloring, trembling. For both of
them it was horrible. All their lives they had been women who had
held up their heads high in point of respectability and more. None
was above them in Banbridge, no shame of wrong-doing or folly had
ever been known by either of them, and now both their finely bonneted
heads were in the dust. They stood before this handsome, courteously
smiling gentleman and were conscious of a very nakedness of spirit.
Their lust of curiosity was laid bare, they were caught in the act.
Mrs. Van Dorn opened her mouth, she tried to speak, but she only made
a strange, croaking sound. Her face was now flaming. But Mrs. Lee was
pale, and she stood rather unsteadily.

Arthur Carroll at first looked merely bewildered. "Aren't the ladies
at home?" said he. "Have you seen the ladies?" He glanced at Mrs. Van
Dorn's deflowered bonnet, and extended the bunch of violets. "Yours,
I think," he said. Mrs. Van Dorn took them with an idiotic
expression, and he asked again if they had seen the ladies.

The spectacle of two elderly, well-dressed females of Banbridge
quaking b