"\'Tis an orgy!" exclaimed Lady Maria.

"Oh, Jasper!" sobbed Lady Standish.

"\'Twould be interesting to know," further trumpeted Lady Maria, "which of these gentlemen is supposed to have run away with the widow Bellairs?"

"Oh, Kitty!" sobbed Lady Standish.

"My God!" said Sir Jasper, laying down his reeking glass and hardly believing his eyes.

Mistress Kitty (seated between O\'Hara and Stafford at the end of the table, while Lord Verney and Sir Jasper faced each other), continued, unmoved, to sip her fragrant brew and cocked her wicked eye at the newcomers, enjoying the situation prodigiously. She laid an arresting hand upon the cuffs of her neighbours, who, all polite amazement, were about to spring to their feet. "Keep still," said she, "keep still and let Sir Jasper and his lady first have their little explanation undisturbed. Never intermeddle between husband and wife," she added demurely: "it has always been one of my guiding axioms!"

"Well, Sir Jasper Standish, these are pretty goings on!" cried Lady Maria, "for a three months\' husband.... (Hold up, my poor dear Julia!) Profligate!" snorted the old lady, boring the baronet through with one gimlet eye. "Dissolute wretch! highwayman!"

"I demand," fluted Lady Standish\'s plaintive treble (in her gentle obstinate heart she had come to the fixed resolution of never allowing Sir Jasper out of her sight again), "I demand to be taken back to my mother, and to have an immediate separation."

"Running away with women out of the streets of Bath!—A lady," (sniff) "supposed to be engaged to my nevvy! Poor deluded boy——"

"And my dearest friend!—oh, Jasper! How could you?"

Sir Jasper broke in upon his wife\'s treble with the anguished roar of the goaded: "The devil take me," cried he, "if I don\'t think the whole world\'s going mad! I elope with the widow Bellairs, Lady Maria, ma\'am? I treacherous, my Lady? Ha!" He positively capered with fury and wounded feeling and general distraction, as he drew the incriminating documents from his breast, and flourished them, one in each hand, under the very nose of his accusers. "What of Red Curl, madam? What of the man who kissed the dimple, madam? What of your lover, madam!"

In his confusion he hurled the last two demands straight in Lady Maria\'s face, who, with all the indignation of outraged virtue, exclaimed in her deepest note:

"Vile slanderer, I deny it!"

Here Mistress Bellairs deemed the moment ripe for her delicate interference.

"My lovely Standish," she cried, "you look sadly. Indeed I fear you will swoon if you do not sit. Pray Mr. Stafford, conduct my Lady Standish to the arm-chair and make her sip a glass of cordial from the bowl yonder."

"Oh, Kitty!" cried Lady Standish, and devoured the widow\'s face with eager eyes to see whether friend or enemy was heralded there.

"My dear," whispered Kitty, "nothing could be going better. Sit down, I tell you, and I promise you that in ten minutes you will have Sir Jasper on his knees."

Then running up to Sir Jasper and speaking with the most childlike and deliberate candour:

"Pray, Sir Jasper," said she, "and what might you be prating of letters and red curls? Strange now," she looked round the company with dewy, guileless eyes, "I lost a letter only a day or two ago at your house—a," she dropped her lids with a most entrancing little simper, "a rather private letter. I believe I must have lost it in dear Julia\'s parlour, near the sofa, for I remember I pulled out my handkerchief——"

"Good God!" said Sir Jasper, hoarsely, and glared at her, all doubt, and crushed the letters in his hand.

"Could you—could you have found it, Sir Jasper, I wonder? Mercy on me! And then this morning ... \'tis the strangest thing ... I get another letter, another rather private letter, and after despatching a few notes to my friends, for the life of me, I could not find the letter any more! And I vow I wanted it, for I had scarce glanced at it."

"Oh, Mistress Bellairs!" cried Sir Jasper. "Tell me," cried he panting, "what did these letters contain?"

"La!" said she, "what a question to put to a lady!"

"For God\'s sake, madam!" said he, and in truth he looked piteous.

"Then, step apart," said she, "and for dear Julia\'s sake I will confide in you, as a gentleman."

She led him to the moonlit window, while all followed them with curious eyes—except Verney, who surreptitiously drank his punch, and slid away from the table, with the fear of his aunt in his heart. And now Mistress Kitty hung her head, looked exceedingly bashful and exceedingly coy. She took up a corner of her dainty flowered gown and plaited it in her fingers.

"Was there," she asked, "was there anything of the description of a—of a trifling lock of hair, in the first letter—\'twas somewhat of an auburn hue?"

"Confusion!" exclaimed the baronet, thrust the fateful letters into her hand, and turning on his heel, stamped his foot, muttering furiously: "Curse the fool that wrote them, and the feather-head that dropped them!"

"And what of the fool that picked them up and read them?" whispered Mistress Kitty\'s voice in his ears, sharp as a slender stiletto.

She looked him up and down with a fine disdainful mockery.