It was quite impossible, of course, that a first visit to Lady Monkton should be a last from Barbara. Lady Monkton had called on her the very day after her arrival in town, but Barbara had been out then. On the occasion of the latter's return visit the old woman had explained that going out was a trial to her, and Barbara, in spite of her unconquerable dislike to her, had felt it to be her duty to go and see her now and then. The children, too, had been a great resource. Sir George, especially, had taken to Tommy, who was quite unabashed by the grandeur of the stately, if faded, old rooms in the Belgravian mansion, but was full of curiosity, and spent his visits to his grandfather cross-examining him about divers matters—questionable and otherwise—that tickled the old man and kept him laughing.

It had struck Barbara that Sir George had left off laughing for some time. He looked haggard—uneasy—miserably expectant. She liked him better than she liked Lady Monkton, and, though reserved with both, relaxed more to him than to her mother-in-law. For one thing, Sir George had been unmistakably appreciative of her beauty, and her soft voice and pretty manners. He liked them all. Lady Monkton had probably noticed them quite as keenly, but they had not pleased her. They were indeed an offence. They had placed her in the wrong. As for old Miss L'Estrange, the aunt, she regarded the young wife from the first with a dislike she took no pains to conceal.

This afternoon, one of many that Barbara has given up to duty, finds her as usual in Lady Monkton's drawing room listening to her mother-in-law's comments on this and that, and trying to keep up her temper, for Frederic's sake, when the old lady finds fault with her management of the children.

The latter (that is, Tommy and Mabel) have been sent to the pantomime by Sir George, and Barbara with her husband have dropped in towards the close of the day to see Lady Monkton, with a view to recovering the children there, and taking them home with them, Sir George having expressed a wish to see the little ones after the play, and hear Tommy's criticisms on it, which he promised himself would be lively. He had already a great belief in the powers of Tommy's descriptions.

In the meantime the children have not returned, and conversation, it must be confessed, languishes. Miss L'Estrange, who is present in a cap of enormous dimensions and a temper calculated to make life hideous to her neighbors, scarcely helps to render more bearable the dullness of everything. Sir George in a corner is buttonholing Frederic and saddening him with last accounts of the Scapegrace.

Barbara has come to her final pretty speech—silence seems imminent—when suddenly Lady Monkton flings into it a bombshell that explodes, and carries away with it all fear of commonplace dullness at all events.

"You have a sister, I believe," says she to Barbara in a tone she fondly but erroneously imagines gracious.

"Yes," says Barbara, softly but curtly. The fact that Joyce's existence has never hitherto been alluded to by Lady Monkton renders her manner even colder than usual, which is saying everything.

"She lives with you?"

"Yes," says Barbara again.

Lady Monkton, as if a little put out by the determined taciturnity of her manner, moves forward on her seat, and pulls the lace lappets of her dove-gray cap more over to the front impatiently. Long, soft lappets they are, falling from a gem of a little cap, made of priceless lace, and with a beautiful old face beneath to frame. A face like an old miniature; and as stern as most of them, but charming for all that and perfect in every line.

"Makes herself useful, no doubt," growls Miss L'Estrange from the opposite lounge, her evil old countenance glowing with the desire to offend. "That's why one harbors one's poor relations—to get something out of them."

This is a double-barrelled explosion. One barrel for the detested wife of the good Frederic, one for the sister she has befriended—to that sister's cost.

"True," says Lady Monkton, with an uncivil little upward glance at Barbara. For once—because it suits her—she has accepted her sister's argument, and determined to take no heed of her scarcely veiled insult. "She helps you, no doubt. Is useful with the children, I hope. Moneyless girls should remember that they are born into the world to work, not to idle."

"I am afraid she is not as much help to me as you evidently think necessary," says Barbara smiling, but not pleasantly. "She is very seldom at home; in the summer at all events." It is abominable to her to think that these hateful old people should regard Joyce, her pretty Joyce, as a mere servant, a sisterly maid-of-all-work.

"And if not with you—where then?" asks Lady Monkton, indifferently, and as if more with a desire to keep up the dying conversation than from any acute thirst for knowledge.

"She stays a good deal with Lady Baltimore," says Barbara, feeling weary, and rather disgusted.

"Ah! indeed! Sort of companion—a governess, I suppose?"

A long pause. Mrs. Monkton's dark eyes grow dangerously bright, and a quick color springs into her cheeks.

"No!" begins she, in a low but indignant tone, and then suppresses herself. She can't, she mustn't quarrel with Freddy's people! "My sister is neither companion nor governess to Lady Baltimore," says she icily. "She is only her friend."

"Friend?" repeats the old lady, as if not quite understanding.

"A great friend," repeats Barbara calmly. Lady Monkton's astonishment is even more insulting than her first question. But Barbara has made up her mind to bear all things.

"There are friends and friends," puts in Miss L'Estrange with her most offensive air.

A very embarrassing silence falls on this, Barbara would say nothing more, an inborn sense of dignity forbidding her. But this does not prevent a very natural desire on her part to look at her husband, not so much to claim his support as to know if he has heard.

One glance assures her that he has. A pause in the conversation with his father has enabled him to hear everything. Barbara has just time to note that his brow is black and his lips ominously compressed before she sees him advance toward his mother.

"You seem to, be very singularly ignorant of my wife's status in society——" he is beginning is a rather terrible tone, when Barbara, with a little graceful gesture, checks him. She puts out her hand and smiles up at him, a wonderful smile under the circumstances.

"Ah! that is just it," she says, sweetly, but with determination. "She is ignorant where we are concerned—Joyce and I. If she had only spared time to ask a little question or two! But as it is——" The whole speech is purposely vague, but full of contemptuous rebuke, delicately veiled. "It is nothing, I assure you, Freddy. Your mother is not to be blamed. She has not understood. That is all."

"I fail even now to understand," says the old lady, with a somewhat tremulous attempt at self-assertion.

"So do I," says the antique upon the lounge near her, bristling with a wrath so warm that it has unsettled the noble structure on her head, and placed it in quite an artful situation, right over her left ear. "I see nothing to create wrath in the mind of any one, in the idea of a young—er——" She comes to a dead pause; she had plainly been going to say young person—but Frederic's glare had been too much for her. It has frightened her into good behavior, and she changes the obnoxious word into one more complaisant.

"A young what?" demands he imperiously, freezing his aunt with a stony stare.

"Young girl!" returns she, toning down a little, but still betraying malevolence of a very advanced order in her voice and expression. "I see nothing derogatory in the idea of a young girl devoid of fortune taking a——"

Again she would have said something insulting. The word "situation" is on her lips; but the venom in her is suppressed a second time by her nephew.

"Go on," says he, sternly.

"Taking a—er—position in a nice family," says she, almost spitting out the words like a bad old cat.

"She has a position in a very nice family," says Monkton readily. "In mine! As companion, friend, playfellow, in fact anything you like of the light order of servitude. We all serve, my dear aunt, though that idea doesn't seem to have come home to you. We must all be in bondage to each other in this world—the only real freedom is to be gained in the world to come. You have never thought of that? Well, think of it now. To be kind, to be sympathetic, to be even Commonly civil to people is to fulfil the law's demands."

"You go too far; she is old, Freddy," Barbara has scarcely time to whisper, when the door is thrown open, and Dicky Browne, followed by Felix Dysart, enters the room.

It is a relief to everybody. Lady Monkton rises to receive them with a smile: Miss L'Estrange looks into the teapot. Plainly she can still see some tea leaves there. Rising, she inclines the little silver kettle over them, and creates a second deluge. She has again made tea. May she be forgiven!

"Going to give us some tea, Miss L'Estrange?" says Dicky, bearing down upon her with a beaming face. She has given him some before this. "One can always depend upon you for a good cup. Ah, thanks. Dysart, I can recommend this. Have a cup; do."

"No, thank you," says Dysart, who has secured a seat next to Barbara, and is regarding her anxiously, while replying to her questions of surprise at seeing him in town at this time of year. She is surprised too, and a little shocked to see him look so ill.

Dicky is still holding a brilliant conversation with Miss L'Estrange, who, to him, is a joy for ever.

"Didn't expect to see me here again so soon, eh?" says he, with a cheerful smile.

"There you are wrong," returns that spinster, in the hoarse croak that distinguishes her. "The fact that you were here yesterday and couldn't reasonably be supposed to come again for a week, made it at once a certainty that you would turn up immediately. The unexpected is what always happens where you are concerned."

"One of my many charms," says Mr. Browne gayly, hiding his untasted cup by a skillful movement behind the sugar bowl. "Variety, you know, is ever charming. I'm a various person, therefore I'm charming."

"Are you?" says Miss L'Estrange, grimly.

"Can you look at me and doubt it?" demands Mr. Browne, deep reproach in his eyes.

"I can," returns Miss L'Estrange, presenting an uncompromising front. "I can also suggest to you that those lumps of sugar are meant to put in the cups with the tea, not to be consumed wholesale. Sugar, plain, is ruinous to the stomach and disastrous to the teeth."

"True, true," says Mr. Browne, absently, "and both mine are so pretty."

Miss L'Estrange rises to her feet and confronts him with a stony glare.

"Both what?" demands she.

"Eh? Why, both of them," persists Mr. Browne.

"I think, Richard, that the sooner you return to your hotel, or whatever low haunt you have chosen as your present abode, the better it will be for all present."

"Why so?" demands Mr. Browne, indignantly. "What have I done now?"

"You know very well, sir," says Miss L'estrange. "Your language is disgraceful. You take an opportunity of turning an innocent remark of mine, a kindly warning, into a ribald——"

"Good heavens!" says he, uplifting brows and hands. "I never yet knew it was ribaldry to talk about one's teeth."

"You were not talking about your teeth," says Miss L'Estrange sternly. "You said distinctly 'both of them.'"

"Just so," says Dicky. "I've only got two."

"Is that the truth, Richard?" with increasing majesty.

"Honest Injun," says Mr. Browne, unabashed. "And they are out of sight. All you can see have been purchased, and I assure you, dear Miss L'Estrange," with anxious earnestness, "paid for. One guinea the entire set; a single tooth, two-and-six. Who'd be without 'em?"

"Well, I'm sorry to hear it," says Miss L'Estrange reseating herself and regarding him still with manifest distrust. "To lose one's teeth so early in life speaks badly for one's moral conduct. Anyhow, I shan't allow you to destroy your guinea's worth. I shall remove temptation from your path."

Lifting the sugar bowl she removes it to her right side, thus laying bare the fact that Mr. Browne's cup of tea is still full to the brim.

It is the last stroke.

"Drink your tea," says she to the stricken Dicky in a tone that admits of no delay. He drinks it.

Meantime, Barbara has been very kind to Felix Dysart, answering his roundabout questions that always have Joyce as their central meaning. One leading remark of his is to the effect that he is covered with astonishment to find her and Monkton in London. Is he surprised. Well, no doubt, yes. Joyce is in town, too, but she has not come out with her to-day. Have they been to the theatre? Very often; Joyce, especially, is quite devoted to it. Do they go much to the picture galleries? Well, to one or two. There is so much to be done, and the children are rather exigeant, and demand all the afternoon. But she had heard Joyce say that she was going to-morrow to DorÉ's Gallery. She thought Tommy ought to be shown something more improving than clowns and wild animals and toy shops.

Mr. Dysart, at this point, said he thought Miss Kavanagh was more reflective than one taking a careless view of her might believe.

Barbara laughed.

"Do you take the reflective view?" says she.

"Do you recommend me to take the careless one?" demands he, now looking fully at her. There is a good deal of meaning in his question, but Barbara declines to recognize it. She feels she has gone far enough in that little betrayal about DorÉ's Gallery. She refuses to take another step; she is already, indeed, a little frightened by what she has done If Joyce should hear of it—oh——And yet how could she refrain from giving that small push to so deserving a cause?

"No, no; I recommend nothing," says she, still laughing. "Where are you staying?"

"With my cousins, the Seaton Dysarts. They had to come up to town about a tooth, or a headache, or neuralgia, or something; we shall never quite know what, as it has disappeared, whatever it is. Give me London smoke as a perfect cure for most ailments. It is astonishing what remarkable recoveries it can boast. Vera and her husband are like a couple of children. Even the pantomime isn't too much for them."

"That reminds me the children ought to be here by this time," says Mrs. Monkton, drawing out her watch. "They went to the afternoon performance. I really think," anxiously, "they are very late——"

She has hardly spoken when a sound of little running feet up the stairs outside sets her maternal fears at rest. Nearer and nearer they sound; they stop, there is a distant scuffle, the door is thrown violently open, and Tommy and Mabel literally fall into the room.