‘Then let Mr. Julian wait, by all means,’ said Ethelberta.  ’Allow him to wait if he likes, but tell him it is uncertain if I shall be able to come down.’

Joey then retired, and the two sisters remained in silence.

‘I wonder if he’s gone,’ Ethelberta said, at the end of a long time.

‘I thought you were asleep,’ said Picotee.  ’Shall we ask Joey?  I have not heard the door close.’

Joey was summoned, and after a leisurely ascent, interspersed by various gymnastic performances over the handrail here and there, appeared again.

‘He’s there jest the same:  he don’t seem to be in no hurry at all,’ said Joey.

‘What is he doing?’ inquired Picotee solicitously.

’O, only looking at his watch sometimes, and humming tunes, and playing rat-a-tat-tat upon the table.  He says he don’t mind waiting a bit.’

‘You must have made a mistake in the message,’ said Ethelberta, within.

’Well, no.  I am correct as a jineral thing.  I jest said perhaps you would be engaged all the evening, and perhaps you wouldn’t.’

When Joey had again retired, and they had waited another ten minutes, Ethelberta said, ’Picotee, do you go down and speak a few words to him.  I am determined he shall not see me.  You know him a little; you remember when he came to the Lodge?’

‘What must I say to him?’

Ethelberta paused before replying.  ’Try to find out if—­if he is much grieved at not seeing me, and say—­give him to understand that I will forgive him, Picotee.’

‘Very well.’

‘And Picotee—­’

‘Yes.’

’If he says he must see me—­I think I will get up.  But only if he says must:  you remember that.’

Picotee departed on her errand.  She paused on the staircase trembling, and thinking between the thrills how very far would have been the conduct of her poor slighted self from proud recalcitration had Mr. Julian’s gentle request been addressed to her instead of to Ethelberta; and she went some way in the painful discovery of how much more tantalizing it was to watch an envied situation that was held by another than to be out of sight of it altogether.  Here was Christopher waiting to bestow love, and Ethelberta not going down to receive it:  a commodity unequalled in value by any other in the whole wide world was being wantonly wasted within that very house.  If she could only have stood to-night as the beloved Ethelberta, and not as the despised Picotee, how different would be this going down!  Thus she went along, red and pale moving in her cheeks as in the Northern Lights at their strongest time.

Meanwhile Christopher had sat waiting minute by minute till the evening shades grew browner, and the fire sank low.  Joey, finding himself not particularly wanted upon the premises after the second inquiry, had slipped out to witness a nigger performance round the corner, and Julian began to think himself forgotten by all the household.  The perception gradually cooled his emotions and enabled him to hold his hat quite steadily.