nt, Mrs Ramsden had duly chartered a
fly, and driven to the Manor with intent to bring her daughter home
without delay. During the night watches old dreads had revived; she
shuddered at the thought of Elma left alone--poor, innocent darling!--
with that terrible young man; pursed her lips at the recollection of
Madame's frivolities, and decided that nothing but grimmest necessity
should induce her to prolong the danger. She entered the Manor, a
Spartan matron prepared to fight to the death for the rescue of her
child, but behold, instead of a battlefield, there stretched before her
eye a scene of pastoral simplicity, in which the most Puritan of critics
could not have discovered an objectionable detail.

A wide, velvet lawn, shaded by a belt of grand old beeches; a deck chair
placed in the most sheltered nook, on which Elma reclined against a bank
of cushions, while beside her--marvellous and confounding sight!--sat
Madame herself, turning the heel of a common domestic stocking, a
mushroom hat hiding the objectionable pompadour. So far as the eye
could reach there was not a man in sight, not so much as a whiff of
tobacco smoke in the air! As the round black figure waddled across the
lawn, Madame rose in gracious welcome, while Elma--Elma's heart began to
beat with sickening rapidity, a mist swam before her eyes, and a lump
swelled in her throat. She could not speak; her cheeks turned first
red, and then white. She shook her head in response to her mother's
greeting, and gasped as for breath.

The good lady was distracted at beholding such symptoms of collapse in
her quiet, well-disciplined daughter, and Madame reproached herself in
the conviction that the child was really much worse than she had
imagined. As a matter of fact, the disease from which Elma was
suffering was nothing more nor less than pure, unadulterated fright!
Fright lest her mother should insist upon taking her home; lest she
should be compelled to leave the Manor before Geoffrey returned from an
excursion carefully timed to end just as his mother drove out to keep an
appointment in the town! She was literally paralysed with fear. It
seemed as if life itself hung on the issue of the next few moments. She
shut her eyes and listened, with palpitating breath, to the conversation
between the two ladies.

"Don't be alarmed! It is just seeing you that has upset her. A few
minutes ago she was quite gay. Weren't you gay, dear? We have had such
a