Mrs. Beever gave ear to this statement, but she gave nothing else. "Mr. Vidal can take care of himself; but if Effie's not at home, where is she?" She pressed her son. "Are you sure of what Jean said to you?"
Paul bethought himself. "Perfectly, mamma. She said Miss Armiger carried off the little girl."
Tony appeared struck with this. "That's exactly what Rose told me she meant to do. Then they're simply in the garden—they simply hadn't come in."
"They've been in gardens enough!" Mrs. Beever declared. "I should like to know the child's simply in bed."
"So should I," said Tony with an irritation that was just perceptible; "but I none the less deprecate the time-honoured custom of a flurry—I may say indeed of a panic—whenever she's for a moment out of sight." He spoke almost as if Mrs. Beever were trying to spoil for him by the note of anxiety the pleasantness of the news about Rose. The next moment, however, he questioned Paul with an evident return of the sense that toward a young man to whom
