’Why should not I have slept, sir?—­if you come to that.  The fashionable world was not to hold me beyond eleven.’

‘So I understood, and endeavoured to stipulate,’ said Mr. Falkirk, ’but I am told you were so late in returning that you would not come home, and preferred, somewhat inexplicably, disturbing Miss Maryland to disturbing me.’

‘Is that what you think?’ she answered, simply.  ’That I broke my word?  Mr. Falkirk, I began returning as you say, at a quarter past eleven.’

’I never expected you to get off before that, my dear.  Then what was the matter?’

The girl hesitated a moment, and then one of her witch looks flashed through in spite of everything.

‘I fell into Charybdis, sir, that was all.’

’I do not remember any such place between here and Merricksdale,’ said Mr. Falkirk.  ’Was it enchantment, my dear?’ But his face was less careless than his words.  Hers grew grave again at once; and, wasting no more time, Miss Kennedy addressed herself to business.

‘I had arranged it all with Miss Bird,’ she said, ’on the way there.  She had a headache and was glad of an excuse to get away early.  It was “a small party,” I found, when you were in the house and the rest were out of doors, but otherwise everybody was there—­and nearly everybody else.  The trees were all lights and flowers; and supper tables stood ready from the first; and you know what the moon was.  So altogether,’ said Miss Hazel, ’it was hard to remember anything about time, and especially to find out.  I fancied that Mrs. Merrick had told about my going early,—­watches seemed so very uncertain, and so many of them had stopped at nine o’clock.  It was only by a chance overhearing that I knew when it was half-past ten.  I lost just a few minutes then, manoeuvring,—­for I did not want “everybody” to see me to the carriage; but when I had vanished into the house, and found Mrs. Merrick, Miss Bird was not there.  She had gone home an hour before, her head being worse, they said.’

Mr. Falkirk said nothing, but his thick brows grew together again.

’Mrs. Merrick said it was not the least matter; her coachman unfortunately was sick, but fifty people would be only too happy.  I said everybody but me wished to stay late,—­O, no, not at all!—­here was Mr. May, going in five minutes, with his sister.  They would be “delighted”.  I could not well tell her, sir,’ said Wych Hazel, with a look at her guardian, ’all that occurred to me in the connection, but I suppose I negatived Mr. May in my face, for Mrs. Merrick went on.  “Mr. Morton, then,—­the most luxurious coach in the county.”  He too was going at once—­if I did.  Or, if I did not mind the walk, her brother-in-law would take charge of me at any moment with pleasure.’

Certainly Mr. Falkirk outdid himself in scowling, at this point.

‘Well—­I must get home somehow,’ she said with another glance,—­ ’and the coach would never do, and the phaeton was tabooed.  But I knew Mrs. Merrick’s sister was Mrs. Blake; and so, thinking of the old doctor, I said at once that I would walk, and ran upstairs for my cloak.  And then I found out,’ said Wych Hazel slowly, ’that the are two sorts of brothers-in-law.’