“Are you in the same scrape with my wife?” Mr. Romsey asked.

Lady Myrie corrected his language.  “I have been deceived in the same way,” she said.  “Though my children are boys (which perhaps makes a difference) I feel it is my duty as a mother not to let them get into bad company.  I do nothing myself in an underhand way.  No excuses!  I shall send a note and tell Mrs. Norman why she doesn’t see my boys to-morrow.”

“Isn’t that a little hard on her?” said merciful Mrs. Romsey.

Mr. Romsey agreed with his wife, on grounds of expediency.  “Never make a row if you can help it,” was the peaceable principle to which this gentleman committed himself.  “Send word that the children have caught colds, and get over it in that way.”

Mrs. Romsey looked gratefully at her admirable husband.  “Just the thing!” she said, with an air of relief.

Lady Myrie’s sense of duty expressed itself, with the strictest adherence to the laws of courtesy.  She rose, smiled resignedly, and said, “Good-night.”

Almost at the same moment, innocent little Kitty astonished her mother and her grandmother by appearing before them in her night-gown, after she had been put to bed nearly two hours since.

“What will this child do next?” Mrs. Presty exclaimed.

Kitty told the truth.  “I can’t go to sleep, grandmamma.”

“Why not, my darling?” her mother asked.

“I’m so excited, mamma.”

“About what, Kitty?”

“About my dinner-party to-morrow.  Oh,” said the child, clasping her hands earnestly as she thought of her playfellows, “I do so hope it will go off well!”

Chapter XXXIV.

Mrs. Presty.

Belonging to the generation which has lived to see the Age of Hurry, and has no sympathy with it, Mrs. Presty entered the sitting-room at the hotel, two hours before the time that had been fixed for leaving Sandyseal, with her mind at ease on the subject of her luggage.  “My boxes are locked, strapped and labeled; I hate being hurried.  What’s that you’re reading?” she asked, discovering a book on her daughter’s lap, and a hasty action on her daughter’s part, which looked like trying to hide it.

Mrs. Norman made the most common, and—­where the object is to baffle curiosity—­the most useless of prevaricating replies.  When her mother asked her what she was reading she answered:  “Nothing.”

“Nothing!” Mrs. Presty repeated with an ironical assumption of interest.  “The work of all others, Catherine, that I most want to read.”  She snatched up the book; opened it at the first page, and discovered an inscription in faded ink which roused her indignation.  “To dear Catherine, from Herbert, on the anniversary of our marriage.”  What unintended mockery in those words, read by the later light of the Divorce!  “Well, this is mean,” said Mrs. Presty.  “Keeping that wretch’s present, after the public exposure which he has forced on you.  Oh, Catherine!”