herded it back again. Once it let it seem to escape altogether, gave it a start of at least a couple of yards, while it watched it with quivering shoulders, and then playfully bounded in the air, and reminded it that it was not its own master. Then there came a dismal little squeak as from a slate-pencil; the poor mouse's troubles were over, and a pleased cat blinked in the sun and licked its lips.
Helena followed this gruesome little drama with an interest that surprised and even rather shocked her She was altogether on the side of the cat; the cat, according to its lights, was not being cruel, it was merely doing the natural thing with a mouse. It happened to like teasing its prey, letting it think that it had escaped, sheathing the claws that had caught it, and playing with it. There was nothing horrible about it: the cat was doing as nature intended it to do. She was rather sorry for the mouse, but that is what came of being a mouse.… And there was Archie, triumphant, with a porter and his rescued luggage. Archie had a way with officials: he smiled at them in a confident, friendly way, and they always did what he wanted and never searched his traps.
There was a dance somewhere that night, but Helena, letting the fact be reluctantly dragged out of her that there was such a thing, only said how nice it would be to go to bed early.
"Are you tired, dear?" asked Lady Tintagel.
Helena made a little deprecating face, the face of the prettiest little martyr in the cause of truth ever beheld.
"No, I can't exactly say I am," she said. "I think—I think I was speaking on behalf of Archie and Jessie."
"But I'm not tired either," said he. "Let's go to somebody's dance. I can't dance an atom, but Helena shall teach me. There's nothing like practice in public. What dance is it, by the way?"
