“Such a charming musical evening—­such a treat!” said she, brisking up, and quite unaware of what had been passing round her the last two hours.

“Miss Leigh was quite untireable,” sneered Janet.  “One could not have asked her to exert herself so much.”

“Must you really go?” interposed Crickey, fearing now the music was over the harmony might cease also.

Bluebell pleaded a promise to return early.

“I am sorry to be the means of taking away any attraction that might have induced you to stay,” put in Janet, determined to give her “one” before she went.

“Thank you,” said Bluebell, sweetly, declining to understand; “but I could scarcely expect you to stay to amuse me.”

“That, I feel sure, would be quite out of my power!” said the other, bent on provocation; and Crickey nervously dragged Bluebell away to get her hat.

Alec lingered till she was fairly off, fearing that Bernard would try and escort her home.  He, however, was thoroughly sulky at the way Gough had monopolized her the whole evening, and was quite as ready as Coey to pronounce her an arrant flirt; which so mollified the latter, that when, a few days later, she and her sister were asked to return Bluebell’s visit at Lyndon’s Landing, she accepted without the slightest hesitation, in a perfectly charitable frame of mind.

Alec and Janet, of course, quarrelled going home; but it being not the first time by a good many, it blew over without a rupture, the gentleman, for the future, cautiously avoiding Bluebell’s name, though he tried all he knew to meet her alone, in which respect Fortune did not favour him; and there being no more efficient chaperons than children, with their sharp observation and fatal habit of repetition, they might meet every day on the blue water without his obtaining more than a saucy glance or a few commonplace words, which he would try and put as much meaning into as he could.

CHAPTER XX.

THE PRINCE PHILANDER.

A division of souls may take place without a word being exchanged.  One
reminded of those mists that rise into a cool stratum of air soon to
redescend in flakes of snow.... 

          
                                                                                —­Human Sadness.

The day that the Misses Palmer were to spend at Lyndon’s Landing turned to rain in the afternoon.  The children had a half-holiday, and so the weather was a double misfortune; and after “What shall we do?” had been asked in every minor key of querulous despondency, they eventually grouped themselves, some sitting, some lying on buffalo robes scattered on the floor, and demanded stories from the elder girls.  From the darkness of the sky, twilight had come earlier, and Freddy had closed the curtains, to give greater mystery to the fairy lore they were invoking.