her voice. To be made love to by a baronet! For the suspicion had, during her long absence, strengthened into assurance. Great had been her growth of heart, large her addition of knowledge, in the few minutes employed to pass to her room, and to bring together every kind of imaginable anodyne; every sort of balsamic remedy.

“My dear Miss Agatha,” cried Hodmadod pretty loudly, that Miss Candituft might have the fullest benefit of his intonation; “my dear lady, I blush for this trouble: when I say, I blush I—I really don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t name it, Sir Arthur. I couldn’t disturb mamma; still I—I wish I had, for upon my word and honour, I don’t know what to do. Oh dear! it is very bad,” and again Agatha glanced at the baronet’s abraded hand.

“Dear me! This is the thing—the very thing,” and Hodmadod took up a card of court-plaister; a healing substance so very rare, and requiring such nice wisdom to prescribe it, that of course the baronet had never thought of the remedy until produced by the anxious maid before him.

“Well, Sir Arthur, I thought that possibly might do: dear me! why didn’t you think of it before? What you must have suffered!” said Agatha with thoughts of pain distressing her pretty face.

“The fact is, I had the misfortune, that is the delight to receive the wound”—Miss Candituft unconsciously tore a camellia to bits as she listened—“in the most beautiful society; and in that society I said to myself, it shall be healed. When I say healed”—

“It will be quite well to-morrow,” said Agatha very earnestly; and now she cast an eye at the wound, measuring its smallness, and with a pair of scissors cut the plaister to the diameter of the[Pg 83] hurt. When she had delicately rounded a piece the size of a shilling; trimming and trimming it as though it was to her impossible to make too nice an adjustment; she gently laid it on the fingers of the baronet, at the same time, with the prettiest grace and humility, dropping a curtsey.

[Pg 83]

Sir Arthur Hodmadod looked smilingly at Agatha, and then at the round black patch lying on his fingers.—“My dear madam, you must breathe upon it.”

“Oh dear no! Not at all! Certainly not,” cried Agatha.

Sir Arthur, holding the little patch by the extreme edges of his finger and thumb-nail, presented it to the lips of Agatha. 

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