“Is this her arrangement?” asked Cecil, pointing to the dust-pan.

“Oh no! she knew nothing about that, nor I; but you see every one has something droll.  See what Mr. Bowater has!”

And Herbert Bowater showed that decidedly uncomplimentary penwiper, where the ass’s head declares “There are two of us;” while every child had some absurdity to show; and Miss Moy’s shrieks of delight were already audible at a tortoise-shell pen-holder disguised as a hunting-whip.

“I must go to my friends,” said Cecil, vouchsafing no admiration of the ring, though she had seen enough to perceive that it was a beautifully engraved ruby; and she hurried back to the library, but only to find all her birds flown, and the room empty!  Pursuing them to the drawing-room, she saw only the backs of a few, in the rearmost rank of the eager candidates for admission to the magic cave.

Lady Tyrrell alone saw her, and turned back from the eager multitude, to say in her low, modulated voice, “Beaten, my dear.  Able strategy on la belle mere’s part.”

“Where’s Mrs. Tallboys?”

“Don’t you see her blue feather, eagerly expectant?  Just after you were gone, Edith Bowater came in, and begged us to come and see the conservatory lighted up; and then came a rush of the Brenden children after their aunt, exclaiming wildly it was delicious—­ lights, and a fairy, and a secret, and every one got something, if they were ever so old.  Of course, after that there was nothing but to follow the stream.”

“It is a regular plot for outwitting us!  Rosamond is dressed up for the fairy.  They are all in league.”

“Well, we must put a good face on it for the present,” said Lady Tyrrell.  “Don’t on any account look as if you were not in perfect accordance.  You can show your sentiments afterwards, you know.”

Cecil saw she must acquiesce, for Mrs. Tallboys was full in the midst.  With an infinitely better grace than her hostess, she yielded herself to the sports, bowed charmingly to the Peri, whirled like a fairy at the whistling, and was rewarded with a little enamel padlock as a brooch, and two keys as ear-rings; indeed she professed, with evident sincerity, that she was delighted with these sports of the old country, and thought the two genies exquisite specimens of the fair, useless, gentle English male aristocracy.

Mrs. Duncombe, too, accepted the inevitable with considerable spirit and good-humour, though she had a little passage-at-arms with Julius; when showing him the ivory card-case that had fallen to her lot, she said, “So this is the bribe!  Society stops the mouth of truth.”

“That is as you choose to take it,” he said.

“Exactly.  When we want to go deep into eternal verities you silence us with frivolous din and dainty playthings for fear of losing your slaves.”

“I don’t grant that.”

“Then why hinder an earnest discussion by all this hubbub?”