“I’m sure I don’t see why we should not,” said Sydney.  “To say nothing of meetings in England; Duke and Armine have only to cough three times in October, and we should all go off together again, and be as jolly as ever.”

“I don’t mean to cough,” said Armine, gravely, “I’ve wasted enough of my life already.”

“In our company, eh?” said Sydney, “or are you to be taken by contraries?”

“No,” said Armine.  “One has duties, and lotus-eating is uncommonly nice, but it won’t do to go on for ever.  I wouldn’t have given in to it this winter if Allen hadn’t floored us.”

“And then when you thought I had got a tutor, and should do some good with him,” chimed in Babie, he must needs go and fall in love and spoil our Miss Ogilvie.”

The disgust with which she uttered the words was so comic, that all the others burst out laughing.

And Fordham said—

“The Land of Afternoon was too strong for him.  Shall you really pine much for Miss Ogilvie, Infanta?”

“I shall miss her dreadfully,” said Babie,” and I think it is very stupid of her to leave mother, whom she has known all her life, and all of us, for a strange man she never saw till four months ago.”

“Oh, Babie, you to be the author of a chivalrous romance!” said Fordham.

“I was young and silly then,” said the young lady, who was within a month of sixteen.

“And all your romances are to be henceforth without love,” said Armine.

“I think they would be much more sensible,” said Babie.  “Why do you all laugh so?  Don’t you see how stupid poor Allen always is?  And it can even spoil Miss Ogilvie, and make her inattentive.”

“Poor Allen,” echoed one or two voices, in the same low tone, for as they peeped out beyond the orange-tree, Allen might be seen, extended on a many-coloured rug, in an exceedingly deplorable attitude.

“O yes,” said Sydney; “but if one has such a—-such a-—such an object as that, one must expect to be stupid and miserable sometimes!”

“She must have been worrying him again,” said Babie.

“O yes, didn’t you see?” said Armine.  “No, I remember you didn’t go out riding early to-day.”

“No, I was finishing Miss Ogilvie’s wedding lace.”

“Well, that French captain, that Elfie went on with at the commandant’s ball, came riding up in full splendour, and trotted alongside of her, chattering away, she bowing and smiling, and playing off all her airs, and at last letting him give her a great white flower.  Didn’t you see it in her breast at breakfast?  Poor Allen was looking as if he had eaten wormwood all the time when he was forced to fall back upon me, and I suppose he has been having it out with her and has got the worst of it.”

“O, it is that, is it?” said Lord Fordham; “I thought she wanted to pique Allen, she was so empressee with me.”

“If people will be so foolish as to care for a pretty face,” sagely said Sydney.