“What, when Mrs. Tallboys had a padlock and key?  I see you are determined to laugh at it all.  Most likely they consulted you beforehand.”

“Cecil, I cannot have you talk such nonsense.  Is this all you have to complain of?”

“No.  There was a charade on the word Blockhead, where your brother Charles and the two De Lanceys caricatured what they supposed to be Mrs. Tallboys’ doctrines.”

“How did she receive it?”

“Most good-humouredly; but that made it no better on their part.”

“Are you sure it was not a mere ordinary piece of pleasantry, with perhaps a spice of personality, but nothing worth resenting?”

“You did not see it.  Or perhaps you think no indignity towards me worth resentment?”

“I do not answer that, Cecil; you will think better of those words another time,” said Raymond, sternly.  “But when you want your cause taken up, you have to remember that whatever the annoyance, you brought it upon yourself and her, by your own extraordinary proceeding towards my mother—­I will not say towards myself.  I will try to smooth matters.  I think the De Lanceys must have acted foolishly; but the first step ought to be an expression of regret for such conduct towards my mother.”

“I cannot express regret.  I ought to have been told if there were things forbidden.”

“Must I forbid your playing Punch and Judy, or dancing on the tight-rope?” cried Raymond, exasperated.

Cecil bit her lip, and treated the exclamation with the silent dignity of a deeply injured female; and thus they reached home, when Raymond said, “Come to your senses, Cecil and apologize to my mother.  You can explain that you did not know the extent of your powers.”

“Certainly not.  They all plotted against me, and I am the person to whom apology is due.”

Wherewith she marched up-stairs, leaving Raymond, horribly perplexed, to repair at once to his mother’s room, where Frank still was; but after replying about his success in the examination, the younger brother retreated, preferring that his story should be told by his mother; but she had not so much as entered on it when Raymond demanded what had so much disturbed Cecil.

“I was afraid she would be vexed,” said Mrs. Poynsett; “but we were in a difficulty.  We thought she hardly knew what she had been led into, and that as she had invited her ladies, it would do less harm to change the character of the party than to try to get it given up.”

“I have no doubt you did the best you could,” said Raymond, speaking with more like censure of his mother than he had ever done since the hot days of his love for Camilla Vivian; “and you could have had nothing to do with the personalities that seem to have been the sting.”

Mrs. Poynsett, true boy-lover that she was, had been informed of the success of Tom’s naughtiness—­not indeed till after it was over, when there was nothing to be done but to shake her head and laugh; and now she explained so that her son came to a better understanding of what had happened.