t to whims! My darling Peckover, it won't do! My
mind's made up to give her the Hair Bracelet. Nothing in the world can
stop me--except, of course, Madonna's having a Hair Bracelet already,
which I know she hasn't."

"Oh! you know that, do you, you mischievous Imp? Then, for once in a
way, you just know wrong!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, losing her temper
altogether.

"You don't mean to say so? How very remarkable, to think of her having
a Hair Bracelet already, and of my not knowing it!--Mrs. Peckover,"
continued Zack, mimicking the tone and manner of his old clerical
enemy, the Reverend Aaron Yollop, "what I am now about to say grieves me
deeply; but I have a solemn duty to discharge, and in the conscientious
performance of that duty, I now unhesitatingly express my conviction
that the remark you have just made is--a flam."

"It isn't--Monkey!" returned Mrs. Peckover, her anger fairly boiling
over, as she nodded her head vehemently in Zack's face.

Just then, Valentine's step became audible in the room above; first
moving towards the door, then suddenly retreating from it, as if he had
been called back.

"I hav'n't let out what I oughtn't, have I?" thought Mrs. Peckover;
calming down directly, when she heard the movement upstairs.

"Oh, you stick to it, do you?" continued Zack. "It's rather odd,
old lady, that Mrs. Blyth should have said nothing about this
newly-discovered Hair Bracelet of yours while I was talking to her.
But she doesn't know, of course: and Valentine doesn't know either, I
suppose? By Jove! he's not gone to bed yet: I'll run back, and ask him
if Madonna really _has_ got a Hair Bracelet!"

"For God's sake don't!--don't say a word about it, or you'll get me into
dreadful trouble!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, turning pale as she thought
of possible consequences, and catching young Thorpe by the arm when he
tried to pass her in the passage.

The step up stairs crossed the room again.

"Well, upon my life," cried Zack, "of all the extraordinary old women

"Hush! he's going to open the door this time; he is indeed!"

"Never mind if he does; I won't say anything," whispered young Thorpe,
his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover's
distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.

"That's a good chap! that's a dear good chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover,
squeezing Zack's hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.

The door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened for the second tim