of screams, "are you really bent on waiting for the last scene of this appallingly commonplace drama? or, having assisted at the sacrifice, may we depart in peace?"
"I've just been talking to a very old friend of mine— Louis de Kervoyou; and I want you to come and speak to him, dear, if you will."
Miss St. Craye slightly shrugged her shoulders in a foreign manner, and raised her eyebrows, murmuring in sub-audible tones, "Encore!"
But she followed her mother, and bestowed a gracious smile and bend upon Louis, who looked up at her in amused consternation.
"You are indeed right, Cecily. I should not have known her. I am very glad to see you again, although, no doubt, you do not remember our first meeting?"
"I do not."
Zella wondered if Alison St. Craye always put so much emphasis into a simple negative or affirmative.
"This is my daughter. I hope you will see something of one another."
"Ah," said Miss St. Craye appraisingly. Her large eyes fixed themselves penetratingly upon Zella, her head slightly inclined to one side.
"You must come and speak French with me," she said. "I feel certain that you are more French than English."
Zella felt slightly gratified, divining instinctively that the words were meant as a compliment.
"I saw you in church," continued Miss St. Craye, "forming an integral part of the procession. What a curious idea all this is, is it not?"
She waved a comprehensive white kid glove around her.
Zella was not certain of her meaning, and made a diplomatic gesture of amused assent.
"Ah, you feel it too."
Alison St. Craye laid her hand for a moment on Zella's shoulder, regardless of the unconventionally of the attitude, and looked at her, nodding her plumed head once or twice.
"You must come and see me, little one," she said in her full, deliberate voice. The words, as she uttered them, seemed charged with an almost sacramental import, and Zella was unable to think of any adequate formula of acceptance.
Lady St. Craye's plaintive tones broke with an odd sound of conventionality upon the moment's weighty silence.
"That will be very nice, dear. How much longer are you going to be in town?" Zella looked at her father.
"We are going to Villetswood to-morrow, but perhaps another day or two "he began.
"This child must come to us," said Alison St. Craye, once more laying a proprietory hand on Zella. "Let her come to-morrow, and we will send her home to you at the end of the week."
The surprised Louis looked at Lady St. Craye.
"Yes, Louis," she said eagerly, do let her come. Alison would like it. You know she has no one of her own age, and"
"My dear parent," broke in Alison with a laugh, in which annoyance and superiority were mingled, "please don't drag in the conventional 'companion of my own age ' myth. I dislike the companionship of the average young woman intensely, as you know, and the dislike is perfectly mutual. But if this little one spent two or three days with us, I fancy we should find that we had something in common."
She smiled at Zella, who smiled back rather confusedly, not in the least knowing what to say, but feeling flattered.
"It is more than good of you, Cecily," said Louis, determinedly addressing Lady St. Craye, and ignoring the compelling gaze fixed upon him by her daughter's heavy-lidded hazel eyes.
"Will you let me write you a line to-night, when I shall know better what our plans are?"
"That is shirking," Alison told him with serious directness. She turned her back upon them with no further farewells, saying over her shoulder to Zella, "I count upon you," and swept into the throng of people now congregating near the door for the bride's departure.
-" Louis, do let her come, if you can manage it," said Lady St. Craye plaintively. "Alison does not often take a fancy to other girls, and I should so like them to be friends."
"And I, my dear Cecily," he said courteously.
He looked at Zella, who nodded imperceptibly. "Then since you are really so kind, I will bring her to you tomorrow; and perhaps you would see her off on Saturday, to rejoin me at Villetswood."
Lady St. Craye looked pleased, and said to Zella:
"That will be so nice, dear. We must do a theatre one night. Here comes the bride at last."
They moved into the entrance, where Muriel, in blue silk and elaborate hat, was making her radiant farewells.
The humorously inclined best man was tying a satin shoe on to the back of the electric brougham with the help of a giggling bridesmaid, and a shower of rice at the last moment sent Muriel and her husband into the shelter of the brougham shrieking with laughter. It drove off rapidly, and James said to Zella:
"Come back with us. My mother will be upset, and want somebody to talk to."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had, indeed, reached the stage of replying to all congratulations with a faint smile and choked "my only daughter," and had discarded her lace handkerchief for one of larger dimensions.
James put her into the carriage very kindly, and said:
"Would you like Zella, mother? I thought father and I would walk home across the Park."
"Yes, my dear boy. Remember that you are all that your mother has now, for it will never be quite the same thing again."
Her agitation increased so much that James said to Zella:
"Get in with her, quick! And let her talk. She hasn't been able to get anyone to look at it her way, and it's frightfully hard on her."
The words were not spoken with James's habitual precision of utterance, and, as Zella got into the carriage beside her weeping Aunt Marianne, she heard him add rather incomprehensibly:
"My mother seems to me the only real thing about this whole show."
She looked back, wondering to whom he had made the odd remark. It was to Louis de Kervoyou, who replied quietly:
"I know what you mean, and I agree. Come down to Villetswood as soon as you can spare the time, James."
XXI
"YES, Zella dear," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, "I quite understand that poor papa liked the idea of your staying on in London for a day or two with the St. Crayes; though, as you know, darling, you could quite well have stayed on here if you had only asked me, and I should have been glad of your help in packing up all the presents. But I thought you had quite settled to go back to Villetswood with poor papa, as was originally arranged."
"It was only that Lady St. Craye was so
