ght.

"I'm afraid I've come just a few minutes too soon," she said, dryly.
"You and Mr. Fitzroy don't seem to have talked things over quite
enough."

The saying was dark and yet too clear. Milly, the meticulously truthful,
saw herself convicted of some horrible falsehood. She blushed violently,
gasped, and rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball. Mr. Fitzroy
ignoring the insinuation, changed his line.

"The part we really wanted you to take, Mrs. Shaw, was that of a nymph
in an Elizabethan masque which Lumley has written, with music by Stephen
Bampton. It's to be played in the rose garden and there's a chorus of
nymphs who sing and dance. We want them to look perfectly lovely, don't
you know, and as there can't be any make-up to speak of, it's awfully
difficult to find the right people."

Mrs. Shaw disdained the lure and mentally condemned his anxiously civil
manner as "soapy."

"I shall ask Mr. Morrison to go to Lady Wolvercote at once," she said,
"and see whether she really wishes me to give up the part. Time's
getting on, and he says he won't be able to have many more rehearsals."

There was a sound as of a carriage stopping in the street below, the
jingling of bits, and a high female voice giving an order. Fitzroy,
inwardly exasperated by Mrs. Shaw's resistance and the abject conduct of
his ally, sprang to his feet.

"I believe that's my aunt!" he exclaimed. "She wants me to call at
Blenheim on the way home, and I suppose the Morrisons told her where I
was."

He managed to slip his head out between the edge of an awning and the
mignonette and geraniums of a window-box.

"It's my aunt, right enough. May I fetch her up, Mrs. Stewart?" He was
down the stairs in a moment and voluble in low-voiced colloquy with the
lady in the barouche.

Lady Wolvercote was organizing the great fancy fair for the benefit of
the County Cottage Hospitals, and had left the dramatic part of the
programme to her nephew to arrange. She was a tall, slight woman, of the
usual age for aunts, and pleasant to every one; but she took it for
granted that every one would do as she wished--naturally, since they
always did in her neighborhood. As she stumbled up the stairs after
Charlie Fitzroy--it was a dark staircase and narrow in proportion to its
massive oak balusters--she felt faintly annoyed with him for dragging
her into the quarrels of his middle-class friends, but confident that
she could manage them without the least trouble.