The room swam in Letitia’s eyes; a mist seemed to rise over the sparkling dining-table—over all the faces of the guests. The voices, too, rang in a kind of hubbub, one confused, big noise through which she seemed able to be sure of nothing except the words of Ralph and the laughter, in which all round were so ridiculously, so horribly ready to join. What revelations he might make! How certainly he would prove to the others that he was no elegant prodigal from the fashionable deserts where so many great persons went after big game, but a mere Australian stockman sent there because nobody knew what to do with him at home! She was vaguely aware of talking a great deal herself to stop his talking, if possible, with the dreadful result of merely increasing his outpourings, and of having to subside at last in sheer prostration of faculty, into an alarmed and horrified silence. Ralph, it was evident, amused her guests though he did not amuse Letitia. And that dreadful Mrs. Kington, how she devoted herself to him; how she played upon him and drew him out! When the moment came for the ladies’ withdrawal, Letitia rose with mingled relief and terror. She said to herself that no man could be so dangerous by Ralph’s side as that clever, spiteful woman; and yet at the same time the dreadful consciousness that among men when they were alone revelations still more appalling might be made, and that John knew nothing of this prodigal brother, gave her a new cause of alarm. Even in such dreadful circumstances, however, a woman has to endure and say nothing. She gave Ralph a glance as she passed him which might have annihilated him, but which conveyed no idea to the obtuse mind of the bushman: while he elevated his eyebrows at her, and made a noise with his tongue against his palate. “You are in all your glory, Tisch!” he said, as she passed. But furious and terrified as she was, she had to go like a martyr to the stake and leave him—to do further harm—who could tell? Mary Hill was in the drawing-room when the ladies filed in, wearing a dyed dress which Letitia had given her, with nervous hands clasped tightly together, and anxiety and panic in her eyes. Mrs. Parke gave her an angry grip as she passed, and said in a fierce whisper, “How could you let him come?” to which Mary answered with a confused murmur of anxious explanation. And then the ordeal began once more.

“How amusing your brother is, Mrs. Parke. I don’t know when I have laughed so much. It is so delightful to meet a man like that out of the wilds—and so genuine—and so funny!”

“You had all the fun at your end of the table,” said another lady. “We heard you all in shrieks of laughter, and wanted to know what it was about.”

“It was about everything,” said Mrs. Kington, laughing at the recollection. “He is so delightfully wild, and such a democrat, and so unconventional.”

“Too much so, a great deal, for the comfort of his family,” said Letitia, with a gasp. She was clever enough to seize upon the chance thus afforded her. “It is not so amusing when the person belongs to you, and when you know how he has thrown away all his chances,” she said, panting.

“Ah!” said Lady Witheringham, with sympathy, “young men are so silly; but none of us can throw a stone in that respect.”

This, though Letitia did not know it, was as good as a bombshell to Mrs. Kington, who knew a great deal about prodigals.

“To be silly is one thing and to be amusing is another,” said that lady, “every man is not such fun who sows wild oats abroad. You must make him tell you about the black fellows. I nearly died of laughing. There is one story I must tell you——”

“For my part I would rather not die of laughing,” said the great lady. She took Letitia by the arm and drew her in the direction of the conservatory. “Let me see your flowers,” she said, “and never mind what they say. I know what it is,” she added, shaking her head, “to have a boy in the family that you can make nothing of. I sympathize with your parents, Mrs. Parke.”

The emergency lent a cleverness which she did not possess to Letitia. She said with a half sob, “He had no mother.” This was not a loss which she had ever been specially moved by before; but necessity develops the faculties. Lady Witheringham clasped her arm still more closely. “Ah, poor boy!” she said; “tell me if it does not pain you, dear Mrs. Parke.”

Dear Mrs. Parke! the words inspired Letitia. Was it possible, she asked herself piously, that good was to come out of evil? and she did tell Ralph’s history, with many details unknown to that gentleman himself, to her sympathetic listener. They walked about softly in front of the subdued lights in the conservatory, the old great lady leaning tenderly upon the arm of John Parke’s wife, whom his other guests were describing to each other as a nobody. “He’s not a gentleman at all, and I daresay she was a milliner,” Mrs. Kington said, feeling it very piquant to communicate these conjectures all but within hearing of the person most concerned. And Letitia divined but now did not care, for had she not got Lady Witheringham on her side?

Mary Hill sat alone, not noticed by anyone. She occupied the place which a governess of retiring manners does in such a party. All governesses are not persons of retiring manners, and consequently the rule does not always hold. And Miss Hill was not the governess. She was not a salaried dependent, but a friend who in reality conferred instead of receiving benefits: but it was as a dependent that everybody regarded her. She sat very quiet with a sense of guilt towards Letitia, which was entirely gratuitous, and a confusing feeling that she was somehow to blame. That she would be blamed she was very well aware, and her powers of vindicating and asserting herself were small. Beyond this there was great trouble and confusion in Mary’s mind. The sight of this big, flushed, disorderly, half-savage man had been a revelation to her even more distressing than his sudden appearance had been to her friend. Letitia’s pride was assailed, but in Mary the wound went a great deal deeper. When Ralph had been sent to Australia ten years before, he was young, and his offences, though terrible to a girl’s sensitive innocence and ignorance, had been things to weep and pray over rather than to denounce. Poor Ralph! he had been her sweetheart when they were children, he had supposed himself in love with her years ago, and Mary had carried all these years a softened image of him in her heart. She had sighed to herself over it in many a lonely hour. Poor Ralph! if her expectations of his return had never been clear, it was still always a possibility pleasant to think of. And now he had come, and her faintly visioned idol had fallen prone to the ground, like Dagon in his temple. He had never attained the importance of a demi-god, to whom sacred litanies might be said. But there had been a vague niche for him in the background of the temple. And in a moment he had fallen, with the first sound of his rough voice and sight of his deteriorated countenance. Mary was still under the influence of this shock, and it was complicated by the conviction that she was to blame, that Letitia would think she was to blame, that she would be accused and would not know how to defend herself. She sat alone, trembling over the evening paper which she was pretending to read. She heard the chuchotement of the soft yet venomous voices near, which were tearing Letitia’s pretensions to pieces, and assuring each other that they had always known her to be a nobody, and the other less audible strain of Letitia’s narrative to Lady Witheringham. What romance was she telling about poor Ralph to interest the old lady so—poor Ralph, who never had any story but vulgar dissipation and the sharp remedy of being turned out of his father’s house to do as he pleased!

The gentlemen as they came in made the usual diversion, arrested the talk of the ladies, and made an alteration in the groups. But Ralph kept his place among the younger men, standing in a group of them telling his bush stories, keeping up noisy peals of laughter. Somehow the carriages of Lady Witheringham and of Mrs. Kington lingered long that night—or rather, which was a sign that the evening had not been a failure so far as they were concerned, these ladies lingered and showed no inclination to go away. When the great lady got up at last she bestowed a kiss upon her palpitating hostess. “I am so much touched by your confidence in me, my dear,” she said, and actually held out her hand to Ralph with a condescending good-night. “I hope you will find your native country the best now that you have returned to it, Mr. Ravelstone,” she said. Ralph was so dumbfounded that fortunately he could only reply by a bow. But Letitia’s troubles were not over even when her outdoor guests were gone. There were still the visitors in the house, and the familiarity of the smoking-room, in which she was sure her brother would fully unveil himself. She made an attempt to draw him with her when the moment came for the candlesticks. “Come with me to my boudoir, Ralph,” she said in her kindest note. But the monster was not to be cajoled. “Oh, I think I see myself in a bou-duar as you call it when there’s a lot of jolly fellows waiting me.” Letitia caught him by the hand sharply, though without putting her nails into it as she would have liked to do—“Mary’s coming with me,” she said with the most winning notes she could bring forth. Ralph roared over her head, opening a wide cavern of a mouth in the middle of his big head. “Mary—’s an old maid,” he said. As for John Parke, he had a troubled air, and cast curious glances of mingled reproach and interrogation at his wife; but he could not leave his guests in the lurch.

By the time she had escaped from the surveillance of the stranger’s looks and had got half way up the stair, Letitia had come to have one clear purpose in her mind if no more—and that was vengeance. She said to herself that all the miseries of the evening were Mary’s fault; its alleviations, Lady Witheringham’s kindness, and her kiss of sympathy Mrs. Parke felt she had achieved for herself—but for Ralph’s appearance, unannounced, and indeed for his presence at all untimely, it was Mary that was to blame. She paused on the stairs where the passage led off to the nursery apartments where Miss Hill, when her room was appropriated as now, found a refuge, and turning sharp round gripped Mary’s hand, who was so fluttered and frightened that she made a step backward and nearly lost her balance. Letitia held her up with that grip furious and tight upon her arm—“You come with me,” she said fiercely, “I’ve got something to say to you——”

“I’d rather—hear it to-morrow,” said poor Mary.

“No, to-night,” said Letitia between her pale lips. She led her way to the boudoir, which indeed was a room sacred not to sulkiness but to many a conflict. It was where she received her housekeeper, her nurse, her husband when he was in the way, the homely dressmaker who helped Mrs. Parke’s maid with her simple dresses, and Miss Hill; these were the privileged persons who knew and had to listen to the eloquent discourses of Letitia—and they had all a sacred horror of the boudoir. She swept into it this evening with Mary following and flung herself into a chair. Her eyes, not generally bright, had little flames in them. She was pale, and panted for breath. After all her long repression it was an unspeakable relief to get to this sanctuary to give vent to herself, to heap wrath upon everybody who was to blame—

“Well, Mary Hill!” she cried with a snort of passion, turning upon her friend. The diamonds on her neck gave forth little quick gleams as they moved with the panting of her wrath as if they simulated the passion which burned in their mistress’ eyes.

“Well, Letitia,” said the mild Mary, “I see you are very angry——”

“Have I not reason to be angry? Why on earth didn’t you let me know? What motive could you have to keep it a secret? Why, for goodness sake didn’t you tell me? I never will fathom you, Mary Hill! And to think that you should have brought this upon me without a word, without making a sign——”

“I implored you to let me speak to you, Letitia. I waited on the stairs for you.”

“Implored me! Waited for me: why you should have forced me to hear. Do you think if it had been as important as that I should have been content to wait on the stairs? I’d have let any one know that minded as much as you know I’d mind. If they’d killed me I’d have let them know—and to think I’ve tried to be so kind to—oh, oh Mary Hill. To think you should have stood by and seen it all and never lifted a hand!”

“What could I do?” said poor Mary, “I wasn’t even there——”

“And why weren’t you there? There are no risks in such a case as that; you should have dressed and come to dinner and made him take you in and kept him quiet. That’s what you would have done if you had been a true friend.”

“I couldn’t have taken—such a liberty; when you had settled it all.”

“What did it matter about my settling it all. Did I know what was going to happen? And to take the advantage just then of coming when I was out of the way! But I tell you what, Mary Hill. I blame you for more than that. You never should have let him come in at all—you never would had you been a true friend.”

“Oh, Letitia, what could I do? Your own brother.”

“My own brother—such a pleasant visitor, don’t you think?—such a credit to us all—without even an evening coat—like a clown, like a blackguard, like a navvy—— Oh, my patience!” cried Letitia, whose eyes were starting from her head and who had no patience at all. “But I know why you did it,” she added after an angry pause to get breath. “Oh, I remember well enough. It’s not for nothing you’re an old maid, Mary Hill! Don’t I know that you’ve had him in your mind all the while.”

Mary, though she was so mild, was being driven beyond the power of self-restraint. She was all the more easily shaken perhaps that there was a certain truth in it. It was true that Ralph Ravelstone had never been forgotten—and that his shadow had come between her and the only marriage she had ever had it in her power to make—but not, oh, not as he appeared now.

“I think,” she said with some gentle dignity, “that it is very improper of you to say anything of the kind. If I am an old maid it’s at least by my own will, and not because I could not help it.” Mary was very mild, and yet she felt that standing upon the platform of that proposal which was the one instance past in her life of the last years, it was hard to be assailed as an old maid by one who knew her so well.

Letitia stood for a moment surprised—scarcely believing her ears. That Mary should have turned upon her! It was like the proverbial worm that sometimes at unexpected moments will turn when nobody is thinking of it. “I know as well as you do that you refused a good offer. What was it made you do it. Oh, I can see through you, though you don’t think so. I always suspected it, and now I know it. But what did you expect to gain by bringing him here. Why should he be brought here? If you had ever told me, if I had known! a man who has been ten years in the bush, a man with a hand like that, and not an evening coat! Oh Mary, you that I have always been so kind to, how could I ever have expected such a thing of you.”

Tears of rage came to the relief of Letitia’s overburdened soul. But she suddenly regained command of herself in a moment, dried her eyes and turned to the door. It was now her own part to stand on the defensive, to prepare, to give explanations and excuses. There was no mistaking the step which was approaching, the heavy step of the outraged husband, he who had never even heard of Ralph’s existence. John Parke was not a man before whom his wife was accustomed to tremble. But she did not know what John might be about to pour forth upon her now.