for a moment?" He was pleased after a mild fashion to see her--she at
least stood for something not too intimately connected with his own
household, he told himself. The next moment he remembered that there had
been some suggestion--what his blurred recollection of it could not tell
him--that she might be being courted by Archelaus; but the slight recoil
of distaste stirred within him fell away before her frank eagerness, her
kindly warmth, as she pattered into the room, her skirts swaying around
her. She sat primly down beside the couch while Vassie stayed by its
foot, determined not to sit down also and so give an air of settled ease
to the interview.

"I--I hope you are better, Ishmael?" faltered Phoebe. She had never
before been in a young man's bedroom, even bereft of its tenant, and she
felt shy and fluttered.

"Oh, I'm all right!" answered Ishmael. "I don't think poor Silly Peter
has enough muscle to hit very hard, you know."

A look of intense relief floated across the strained demureness of
Phoebe's countenance: raised eyelids and a heightened colour testified
to what passed through her mind.

"Oh, then it was Silly Peter--" she began ingenuously; then broke off.

"Yes, didn't you know? He was dazed with the lights, and then the sudden
darkness and all of us being so angry, I suppose.... Hullo, what's
that?"

It was Killigrew's voice calling softly up the stairs to Vassie. She
hesitated, made a feint of going to the door only to hear what he