“I am very glad and thankful!  I only wish you had seen him last week.  He was better then, but he had a worry about our little nephew, which threw him back.”

“So he told me.  The more quiescent and amused you can keep him, the more chance of a fair recovery there will be.  I am glad he thinks of dining with the party to-night.”

“I am glad he still thinks.  I had to come away early, when he had still left it doubtful.”

“I encouraged the idea with all my might.”

“Do you think he will be able to go back to his parish?”

“Most assuredly not while every worry tells on him in this manner.  You must, if possible, take him abroad for the winter, before he begins to think about it.”

“He has leave of absence for a year.”

“Dating from Easter, I think.  Keep him in warm climates as long as you can.  Find some country to interest him without over-fatigue, and you will, I hope, be able to bring him home fit to consider the matter.”

“That is all you promise?”

“All I dare—-not even to promise-—but to let you hope for.”

An interruption came; one of the young ladies had had her skirt trodden on, and wanted it to be stitched up.  Then came Jane Mohun to deposit a handkerchief which some one had dropped.  “I can stay a moment,” she said; “no one will come to buy till the masque is ended.  Oh, this red cloak will be the death of me!”

“You look highly respectable without it.”

“I shall only put it on for the coup d’oeil at first.  Oh, Geraldine, what is to be done with that horrid little Maura?”

“The pretty little Greek girl-—Mrs. Henderson’s sister?”

“Oh! it is not Mrs. Henderson’s fault, nor my sister Ada’s either, except that the little wretch must have come round her.  I know Ada meant to stay away on that very account.”

“What account?”

“Ivinghoe’s, to be sure!  Oh!  I forgot.  You are so much one of us that I did not remember that you did not know how the foolish boy was attracted-—no, that’s too strong a word—-but she thought he was, when they were here to open Rotherwood Park.  He did flirt, and Victoria-— his mother, I mean-—did not like it at all.  She would never have come this time, but that I assured her that Maura was safe at Gastein!”

“Is it so very undesirable?”

“My dear!  Their father was old White’s brother, a stone-mason.  He was raised from the ranks, but his wife was a Greek peasant-—and if you had seen her, when the Merrifield children called her the Queen of the White Ants!  Ivinghoe is naturally as stiff and formal as his mother, I am not much afraid for him, except that no one knows what that fever will make of a young man, and I don’t want him to get his father into a scrape.  There, I have exhaled it to you, and there is a crowd as if the masque was done with.”

It was, and the four hundred auditors were beginning to throng about the stalls, strays coming up from time to time, and reporting with absolute enthusiasm on the music and acting.  Marilda was one of these.