Mistress Bellairs took her departure early.

Attired in unusually sober colours, floating in an atmosphere of chastened, matronly dignity, she had shown herself this evening, thought Lord Verney, quite worthy to be his mother\'s daughter-in-law.

"Monstrous dull," Lady Flyte called the pretty widow\'s demeanour.

Beyond a gavotte with Lord Verney, she had not danced, but sat for half-an-hour on the chair next to Lady Maria, who presented her with the vision of a shoulder-blade which had seen better days, and an impenetrability of hearing which baffled even Kitty\'s undaunted energy.

When Verney had tucked her up in her sedan she insisted upon the young peer allowing her to proceed home unescorted.

"Indeed," said she, "I pray you, nay, I order you. People talk so in this giddy place, and have you not your aged aunt to wait upon? I am sure," said Mistress Kitty piously, "that your dear mother would wish it thus."

He submitted. He had no doubt that his mother would indeed entirely concur with such sentiments, and blessed his Kitty for her sweet reasonableness.

"Good-night, then," she said, thrusting her pretty face out of the window with a very tender and gentle smile.

"Good-night," he replied, with his young, gracefully-awkward bow.

She fully expected to hear his footstep pursue the chairman, for she had not been able to refrain from throwing her utmost fascination into that parting look. But nothing broke the silence of the parade save the measured slouching tramp of the bearers.

At once disappointed and relieved, she threw herself back in her seat.

"What, not a spark left," said she, "of the fine flame \'twas so easy to kindle this morning! \'Tis the very type of the odious British husband. Let him be but sure of you, and the creature struts as confident of his mastery as the cock among his hens. Lord!" she shuddered, "what an escape I have had! We women are apt to fancy that very young men are like very young peas, the greener, the tenderer, the better; whereas," said the lady, with a sigh, "they are but like young wine, crude where we look for strength, all head and no body, and vastly poor upon the palate."

She sighed again, and closed her eyes, waiting for the moment of the impending catastrophe with a delicate composure.

In truth, Mr. O\'Hara conducted the performance with so much brio as to convince Mistress Bellairs that he must have had previous experience of the kind.

At the dark appointed corner the two muffled individuals who, each selecting his own astonished chairman, enlaced him with overwhelming brotherly affection, seemed such thorough-paced ruffians in the dim light, that Mistress Kitty found it quite natural to scream—and even had some difficulty in keeping her distressful note down to the pitch of necessary discretion.

And her heart fluttered with a sensation of fear, convincing enough to produce quite a delightful illusion, when she found herself bodily lifted out of her nest and rapidly carried through the darkness in an irresistibly close and strong embrace.

"Oh, oh, oh!" cried the lady, in a modulated sequence of little shrieks.

"Merciful heavens!" she thought to herself, with a great thump of the heart, astonished at her ravisher\'s silence, "what if it should be someone else after all?"

But the next instant the rich brogue of a tender whisper in her ear dispelled all doubt.

"You\'ve forgotten the scratches, my darling," said O\'Hara, as he laid her preciously upon the cushions of the chaise.

Here Mr. Mahoney and his comrade—which latter bore a curious resemblance in build and gait to one of the sporting Marquis\'s own celebrated gladiators—came running up to take their seats. In leaped O\'Hara—the coachman lifted his whip, and the team that Phoebus might have envied started up the length of Milsom Street in style.

*****

The chairmen, drawing their breath with some difficulty after their spell of strangulation, stared in amazement at the clattering shadow as it retreated up the steep street; and then back, and in fresh amazement, at the yellow guinea which had been pressed, and now glinted, in the palm of their hands.

Presently a simultaneous smile overspread their honest countenances.

"A queer go," said the first, easing and readjusting his necklace. "Lud, the little madam did squeak!"

"I\'d let them all squeak at the same price," said the other, pocketing his coin, and resuming his place in rear of the sedan. "But come, Bill, we must go report this \'orrible crime. Rabbit me!—what\'s that?"

A blood-curdling wail had risen out of the night, from his very elbow it seemed. It circled in frightful cadence, and died away in ghost-like fashion.

"\'T—\'tis but a sick cat, I hope," stammered the first chairman, and dived for the chair-poles in marked hurry.

"O—o—o—o," moaned the voice, "oh, my mistress!" There was a flutter, a patter, and: "Merciful heavens, you wretches!" cried Mistress Bellairs\'s devoted woman, emerging like a gust of w............