lted a woman once is no
reason why the rest of us should jilt _him_."

* * * * *

It is an hour later, and all the guests have gone except indeed Kit, who
has been sent upstairs tired and sleepy to share Monica's room, and
Terence and Brian Desmond, who with his friend Kelly are struggling into
their top-coats in the hall. The rain is descending in torrents, and
they are regarding with rather rueful countenances the dog-cart awaiting
them outside, in which they had driven over in the sunny morning that
seems impossible, when Madam O'Connor sweeps down upon them.

"Take off those coats at once," she says. "What do you mean, Brian? I
wouldn't have it on my conscience to send a rat out of my house on such
a night as this, unless under cover." Her conscience is Madam's strong
point. She excels in it. She ofttimes swears by it! Her promise to Miss
Priscilla that Desmond shall not sleep beneath her roof during Monica's
stay is forgotten or laid aside, and finally, with a smile of
satisfaction, she sees the two young men carried off by Ronayne for a
final smoke before turning in.

"I don't feel a bit sleepy myself," says Monica, who is looking as fresh
and sweet as if only now just risen.

"Neither do I," says Olga. "Come to my room, then, and talk to me for a
minute or two."

They must have been long minutes, because it is quite an hour later when
a little slender figure, clad in a pretty white dressing-gown, emerges
on tiptoe from Mrs. Bohun's room and steals hurriedly along the deserted
corridor.

Somebody else is hurrying along this corridor, too. Seeing the childish
figure in the white gown, he pauses; perhaps he thinks it is a ghost;
but, if so, he is a doughty man, because he goes swiftly up to it with a
glad smile upon his lips.

"My darling girl," he says, in a subdued voice, "I thought you were in
the middle of your first happy dream by this."

Monica smiles, and leaves her hand in his.

"I am not such a lazy-bones as you evidently thought me," she says. "But
I must hurry now, indeed. All the world is abed, I suppose; and if Kit
wakes and finds me not yet come, she will be frightened."

"Before you go, tell me you will meet me somewhere to-morrow. You,"
uncertainly, "_are_ going home to-morrow, are you not?"

"Yes. But--but--_how_ can I meet you? I have almost given my word to
Aunt Priscilla to do nothing--clandestine--or that; and how shall I
break it? You are always tem