me the key.'

'Ginevra, can you ever forgive me? Let us go up and read it together.'

With arms locked they seek the seclusion of Amy's bedroom. Cosmo
rushes in to tell them that there is a suspicious-looking cab coming
down the street, but finding the room empty he departs again to
reconnoitre. A cab draws up, a bell rings, and soon we hear the voice
of Colonel Grey. He can talk coherently to Fanny, he can lend a hand
in dumping down his luggage in the passage, he can select from a
handful of silver wherewith to pay his cabman: all impossible deeds to
his Alice, who would drop the luggage on your toes and cast all the
silver at your face rather than be kept another minute from her
darlings. 'Where are they?' she has evidently cried just before we see
her, and Fanny has made a heartless response, for it is a dejected
Alice that appears in the doorway of the room.

'_All_ out!' she echoes wofully, 'even--even baby?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

The poor mother, who had entered the house like a whirlwind, subsides
into a chair. Her arms fall empty by her side: a moment ago she had
six of them, a pair for each child. She cries a little, and when Alice
cries, which is not often for she is more given to laughter, her face
screws up like Molly's rather than like Amy's. She is very unlike the
sketch of her lately made by the united fancies of her son and
daughter; and she will dance them round the room many times before
they know her better. Amy will never be so pretty as her mother, Cosmo
will never be so gay, and it will be years before either of them is as