Urged by Eileen, who would think her a “pig” if she refused, Ena reluctantly uncurled herself from a safe and graceful position on a cushioned sofa.  The result was alarming.  Her swimming head warned her that if she did not instantly sit down again something too awful to think of in the presence of an earl would happen.

“You’d better go without me.  I’m not very keen,” she faintly explained, appealing to Peter with her eyes.

He contrived to understand without asking stupid questions, as some brothers would, and hurried the others off to the room of the mirrors.  No longer was it a room of mystery; yet romance, once awakened, cannot be put to sleep in a minute, and Peter Rolls’s heart beat with excitement or shyness, he was not sure which, as Lady Eileen O’Neill knocked at the dryad door.

CHAPTER II

BALM OF GILEAD

It was the worst possible moment for the dryads.  But when their tear-wet eyes beheld a girl and two men, some deep-down primordial pride of womanhood rushed to their rescue and, flowing through their veins, performed a miracle beyond the power of any patent remedy.  The five forlorn girls became at need the five stately goddesses Mme. Nadine paid them to be. (Winifred Child, by the way, was not paid, for she was not a goddess by profession.  But she got her passage free.  It was for that she was goddessing.)

Miss Devereux was the leader, by virtue, not of extra age, no indeed! but of height, manner, and experience.  She apologized, with the most refined accent, for Mme. Nadine, who was “quite prostrated”; for Mme. Nadine’s manageress, who was even worse; and for themselves.  “I’m afraid we must do the best we can alone,” she finished with unconscious pathos.

“It’s a shame to disturb you,” said Peter Rolls.

Miss Devereux and her attendant dryads turned their eyes to him.  They had fancied that he was the man who had burst in before and burst out again; now they were sure.  If he had been a woman, they would have borne him a grudge for coming back and bringing companions worse than himself; but as he was a man, young, and not bad looking, they forgave him meekly.

They forgave the other man for the same reason, and forgave the girl because she was with the men.  If only they could behave themselves as young ladies should through this ordeal!  That was the effort on which they must concentrate their minds and other organs.

“Not at all,” returned Miss Devereux, every inch a princess.  “We are here to be disturbed.” (Alas, how true!)

She smiled at Lady Eileen, but not patronizingly, because a mysterious instinct told her that the plain, pleasant young girl in Irish tweed was a “swell.”  The men, too, were swells, or important in some way or other.  One exerted one’s self to be charming to such people and to keep the male members of the party from looking at the other girls.  “Would you like to see something else, different from what we are showing?  Evening cloaks?  Day dresses?  We have a number of smart little afternoon frocks—–­”