“I wondered if she would be in time,” said Clarissa, seating herself at her claw-legged, brass-mounted writing-table.  “Has she changed much, Kitty—­not that I mean”—­and Clarissa’s sentence ended in a laugh.

“There was room for it,” finished Kitty.  “No, she is just the same:  aping youth, with the desire to conceal age.”

“Oh, Kitty, that’s the severest speech I ever knew you guilty of!”

“Ill-natured, aye,” quoth Kitty, with a comical sigh; “the world’s awry this morning and I must vent my crossness on somebody, so let it be Peggy.  But if I can carry her your note it will atone for my peevish speech a dozen times, for is not Captain Sir John Faulkner coming, and you know as well as all of us that Peggy’s airs and graces are most apparent in his company.”

Betty looked quickly up into Kitty’s face as she rattled on gayly, and detected an air of trouble and anxiety that was most unusual.  And as they presently followed Clarissa downstairs, she paused at the landing and slid her little fingers into Kitty’s as she whispered:—­

“What’s amiss?  You are worried, I perceive; can I help you?” Kitty started, and turning her head over her shoulder said softly:—­

“Not now, but I know that you are true-hearted and quick-witted; I dare not say one word more,” and with an affectionate pressure, she dropped Betty’s hand and ran swiftly down the staircase.

The drawing-room in the Verplanck mansion was high of ceiling, a spacious, stately room, and its quaint, straight-backed chairs, stuffed ottomans, and carved mahogany sofas were the acme of elegance of those days.  The highly polished floor had received extra attention from Pompey and his assistants, while the mirrors shone brightly and reflected the candles of the brass sconces on either side of their glittering surfaces.  Betty, at Clarissa’s request, superintended the placing of the card-tables, and also that of a huge silver salver, on which the tiny cups for chocolate and the tall glasses for mulled wine would be served from a table in the dining-room early in the evening before supper; also a famous bowl of Indian china, where hot caudle would appear, caudle being an English compound with which Betty was not familiar.  Peter explained it to her with due regard to detail; and smacked his lips over the bottle as it smoked away on Dinah’s kitchen table, where he had invited Betty to come out and see it.

“Dinah makes a sort of posset first, of oaten-meal, and then she puts in coriander seeds, and raisins, all carefully stoned (I ought to know that, for I helped her one mortal hour last night and got my fingers sticky with the plagued stones), and some cloves in a muslin bag, which are let lie till the caudle boils, and then removed, and last of all, just as it’s ready to serve, she pops in a good half bottle of cognac—­my! but it’s prime!” and Peter cut a pigeon-wing and gave a regular Mohawk war-whoop, as he danced around the kitchen and disappeared through the door just in time to avoid Dinah’s wet dishcloth, which she sent spinning at his close-cropped pate.