'd to put her up in a small, most inconvenient
room, just inside o' me own."

"How was that?" asks Lady Baltimore, kindly. "The inn so full then?"

"Fegs 'twas that was the matther wid it," says Mrs. Connolly, with a
beaming smile. "Crammed from cellar to garret."

"Ah! the wet night, I suppose."

"Just so, my lady," composedly, and with another deep curtsey.

Lady Baltimore having given Mrs. Connolly into the care of the
housekeeper, who is an old friend of hers, leads Joyce upstairs.

"You are not angry with me?" says Joyce, turning on the threshold of her
room.

"With you, my dear child? No, indeed. With Norman, very! He should have
turned back the moment he saw the first symptom of a storm. A short
wetting would have done neither of you any harm."

"There was no warning; the storm was on us almost immediately, and we
were then very close to Falling."

"Then, having placed you once safely in Mrs. Connolly's care, he should
have returned himself, at all hazards."

"It rained very hard," says Joyce in a cold, clear tone. Her eyes are on
the ground. She is compelling herself to be strictly just to Beauclerk,
but the effort is too much for her. She fails to do it naturally, and so
gives a false impression to her listener. Lady Baltimore casts a quick
glance at her.

"Rain, what is rain?" says she.

"There was storm, too, a violent storm; you must have felt it here."

"No storm should have prevented his return. He should have thought only
of you."

A little bitter smile curls the girl's lips: it seems a farce to suggest
that he should have thought of her. He! Now with her eyes effectually
opened, a certain scorn of herself, in that he should have been able so
easily to close them, takes possession of her. Is his sister blind still
to his defects, that she expects so much from him; has she not read him
rightly yet? Has she yet to learn that he will never consider any one,
where his own interests, comforts, position, clash with theirs?

"You look distressed, tired. I believe you are fretting about this,"
says Lady Baltimore, with a little kindly bantering laugh. "Don't be a
silly child. Nobody has said or thought anything that has not been
kindly of you. Did you sleep last night? No. I can see you didn't.
There, lie down, and get a little rest before luncheon. I shall send you
up a glass of champagne and a biscuit; don't refuse it."

She pulls down the blinds, and goes softly out of the room to her
boudo