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whole countenance was so abject that the whisper of her light blue skirts as she backed away from the closed door was as an involuntary sigh. She had just turned and begun to walk away down the long carpeted hall when the door she had approached swung wide and a lowered voice called excitedly,
    “Annabelle! Belle! The very one I was hoping to see. Oh Belle, you have no idea how I’ve wished you would come. Come in, please do. And quickly.”
    As Annabelle turned and came into the room, the dark-haired young woman who had summoned her made rapid little gestures with her hands, signifying stealth and speed. Once the blond young woman entered the room as she had been bade, the other closed the door quickly behind her and then rested her body against it as though to hold it even more securely shut.
    “Good lord! Belle, you can have no idea of how desperate I was,” she breathed. “I couldn’t send word through the servants, for then the fact that I was up and about would have gotten to my father. I know that I’m to have a peal rung over me, believe me I’m aware I deserve it. I’m not trying to evade that, but I wanted to have some time to myself before I entered the dock. I’m that embarrassed. I pretended I was still asleep when Katie came in with my chocolate, but dressed as soon as she had left. Then I waited and waited for you to appear. I was going to slip out and creep to your rooms on my hands and knees if I had to.”
    “I was here an hour ago, cousin,” Annabelle said in her soft voice, not reproachfully but rather with a sort of sad surprise. “I supposed you were still asleep.”
    “It’s probably because you scratched at the door, didn’t you?” her cousin accused. At the smaller girl’s weak shrug and downcast eyes, she went on with a note of exasperation, “Good heavens, Belle, how many times must I tell you? You’re not some sort of lower servant. Knock upon my door, kick and bang it if you must. But a weak little scratch and a whispery little ‘Leonora’ won’t get you anywhere. And I wasn’t sleeping,” she said on a gusty sigh, “for I couldn’t all the night. Good lord, Belle, how old do I have to grow before I stop making such a clunch of myself?” she asked with such a note of sincere misery that her cousin’s pale brows went up in alarm.
    “Here I am at three and twenty,” railed the dark-haired lady as she left the door and paced across her room, “and still committing social errors so ghastly that I stand apart and watch myself as though I were seeing some other person—at some other person hell-bent on destroying myself at that—take over my body. And now still hiding from Papa as though I were a guilty toddler because of it! Oh, Belle,” she cried wildly as she sank to sit on the edge of her bed and stared at her cousin, “shall I never grow up?” Since it was an unanswerable question, Lady Leonora did not wait for a reply, but only went on to say feelingly, “What a dreadful thing to have done. And to such a man as Severne, as well! I don’t see eye to eye with Papa on many things, as you well know, but in this case I shouldn’t blame him in the least if he shipped me off home this very day. It would put paid to all our plans, but I don’t think I’d blame him in the least. No, and if he shouted the house down over my head before I left as well, I shouldn’t blame him either.”
    As the lady sat and hung her dark head as though the thoughts it contained made it too heavy for her to hold erect, her cousin said in puzzled tones, “But cousin, it’s nothing like that, I assure you. I went down to breakfast this morning. And your papa came in when I was halfway done. He asked after you, and your mama said you were still abed. She did say that she thought you might be avoiding him,” Annabelle added consideringly, “but he said nothing further until your mama asked if he knew what you had said to Lord Severne, and if he was very angry at you for it.”
    “And