What mattered it now that in the dead hush Lady Jocelyn should assure her mother that she had been misinformed, and that Mrs. Mel was presently quieted, and made to sit with others before the fruits and wines?  All eyes were hateful—­the very thought of Providence confused her brain.  Almost reduced to imbecility, the Countess imagined, as a reality, that Sir Abraham had borne with her till her public announcement of relationship, and that then the outraged ghost would no longer be restrained, and had struck this blow.

The crushed pic-nic tried to get a little air, and made attempts at conversation.  Mrs. Mel sat upon the company with the weight of all tailordom.

And now a messenger came for Harry.  Everybody was so zealously employed in the struggle to appear comfortable under Mrs. Mel, that his departure was hardly observed.  The general feeling for Evan and his sisters, by their superiors in rank, was one of kindly pity.  Laxley, however, did not behave well.  He put up his glass and scrutinized Mrs. Mel, and then examined Evan, and Rose thought that in his interchange of glances with any one there was a lurking revival of the scene gone by.  She signalled with her eyebrows for Drummond to correct him, but Drummond had another occupation.  Andrew made the diversion.  He whispered to his neighbour, and the whisper went round, and the laugh; and Mr. Raikes grew extremely uneasy in his seat, and betrayed an extraordinary alarm.  But he also was soon relieved.  A messenger had come from Harry to Mrs. Evremonde, bearing a slip of paper.  This the lady glanced at, and handed it to Drummond.  A straggling pencil had traced these words: 

’Just running by S.W. gates—­saw the Captain coming in—­couldn’t stop to stop him—­tremendous hurry—­important.  Harry J.’

Drummond sent the paper to Lady Jocelyn.  After her perusal of it a scout was despatched to the summit of Olympus, and his report proclaimed the advance in the direction of the Bull-dogs of a smart little figure of a man in white hat and white trousers, who kept flicking his legs with a cane.

Mrs. Evremonde rose and conferred with her ladyship an instant, and then Drummond took her arm quietly, and passed round Olympus to the East, and Lady Jocelyn broke up the sitting.

Juliana saw Rose go up to Evan, and make him introduce her to his mother.  She turned lividly white, and went to a corner of the park by herself, and cried bitterly.

Lady Jocelyn, Sir Franks, and Sir John, remained by the tables, but before the guests were out of ear-shot, the individual signalled from Olympus presented himself.

‘There are times when one can’t see what else to do but to lie,’ said her ladyship to Sir Franks, ’and when we do lie the only way is to lie intrepidly.’

Turning from her perplexed husband, she exclaimed: 

‘Ah!  Lawson?’

Captain Evremonde lifted his hat, declining an intimacy.