Louis talked vigorously of Virginia and Louisa—­secretly marvelling how his hosts had brought themselves down to such fare.  Isabel was dining without apparently seeing anything amiss, and James attempted nothing but a despairing toss of his chin, as he pronounced the carrots underdone.  After the first course there was a long interval, during which Isabel and Louis composedly talked about the public meeting which he had been attending, and James fidgetted in the nervousness of hardly-restrained displeasure; but suddenly a frightful shrieking arose, and he indignantly cried, ‘That girl!’

‘Poor Charlotte in her hysterics again,’ said Isabel, moving off, quickly for her, with the purple scent-bottle at her chatelaine.

‘Isabel makes her twice as bad,’ exclaimed James; ’to pet her with eau-de-Cologne is mere nonsense.  Some day I shall throw a bucket of cold water over her.’

Isabel had left the door open, and they heard her softly comforting Charlotte with ‘Never mind,’ and ‘Lord Fitzjocelyn would not care,’ till the storm lulled.  Charlotte crept off to her room, and Isabel returned to the dinner-table.

‘Well, what’s the matter now?’ said James.

‘Poor Charlotte!’ said Isabel, smiling; ’it seems that she trusted to making a grand appearance with the remains of yesterday’s pudding, and that she was quite overset by the discovery that Ellen and Miss Catharine had been marauding on them.’

’You don’t mean that Kitty has been eating that heavy pudding at this time of night?’ cried James.

‘Kitty eats everything,’ was the placid answer, ’and I do not think we can blame Ellen, for she often comes down after our dinner to find something for the nursery supper.’

‘Things go on in the most extraordinary manner,’ muttered James.

‘I suppose Charlotte misses Jane,’ said Louis.  ‘She looks ill.’

‘No wonder,’ said James, ’she is not strong enough for such work.  She has no method, and yet she is the only person who ever thinks of doing a thing properly.  I wish your friend Madison would come home and take her off our hands, for she is always alternating between fits of novel-reading and of remorse, in which she nearly works herself to death with running after lost time.’

‘I should be sorry to part with her,’ said Isabel; ’she is so quiet, and so fond of the children.’

‘She will break down some day,’ said James; ’if not before, certainly when she hears that Madison has a Peruvian wife.’

‘There is no more to come,’ said Isabel, rising; ’shall we come upstairs?’

James took up the candles, and Louis followed, considerably hungry, and for once provoked by Isabel’s serene certainty that nobody cared whether there were anything to eat.  However, he had forgotten all by the time he came upstairs, and began to deliver a message from Lady Conway, that she was going to write in a day or two to beg for a visit from Isabel during her sojourn at Estminster, a watering-place about thirty miles distant.  Isabel’s face lighted with pleasure.  ‘I could go?’ she said, eagerly turning towards James.