den meaning in the glance which met
hers so frankly. "Thanks awfully. You are kind!" she cried with
enthusiasm, but in her heart she thought the kindness the most cruel
treatment she had ever experienced. As soon as she could leave
naturally she rose to say good-bye, and then came a fresh blow, for,
instead of escorting her across the road as he had insisted on doing
hitherto, Jack kept his arm round Pixie's shoulder, and deputed Pat to
take his place.

"Now, then, you lazy fellow, get your hat, and see Miss Trevor home!"

Pat was delighted, and after all it was natural enough that Jack should
not care to turn out in the cold so soon after coming in, and yet--and
yet--Sylvia stood at her bedroom window looking at the lights across the
road, and as she looked they grew strangely dull and faint. Triumphs
are dearly won sometimes, and her mood to-night was the reverse of
victorious.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

AT THE CIRCUS.

Mamzelle Paddy began and continued her work in the Wallace nursery with
complete satisfaction to all concerned. Esmeralda, it is true, had
surpassed herself in violence of diction in the letter which came in
answer to the one breaking the news; but while Bridgie shed tears of
distress, and Jack frowned impatience, the person against whom the
hurricane of invective was hurled, received it with unruffled and even
sympathetic composure.

As Pixie read over the crowded sheets her eye flashed approval of
dramatic points, she set her lips, and wagged her head, entering so
thoroughly into the spirit of the writer that she unconsciously adopted
her manner when aroused, and when the concluding words were read, heaved
a deep sigh of satisfaction. "She'll feel a lot better after that!" she
remarked tersely, and the prophecy could not fail to be comforting to
those who knew Mrs Hilliard's temperament.

After such an outburst, repentance might be expected to set in even more
speedily than usual, and a peace-offering in the shape of a hamper
crowded with good things could be confidently looked for in the course
of the next few days. Esmeralda disliked formal apologies, and from the
boys' point of view, at least, turkeys and game made a more eloquent
_amende_.

Viva and Inda Wallace were loving and lovable children, but possessed
with a nervous restlessness, an insatiable curiosity, and with such
easily-roused tempers as would have reduced an ordinary adult governess
to despair within a very short peri