The others added to our pained position by some ungenerous murmurs about our not being so jolly clever as we thought ourselves.
There was a very far from pleasing silence.

Then Oswald got up.

He said-- 'Alice, come here a sec; I want to speak to you.' As Albert's uncle had offered no advice, Oswald disdained to ask him for any.
Alice got up too, and she and Oswald went into the garden, and sat down on the bench under the quince tree, and wished they had never tried to have a private lark of their very own with the Antiquities--'A Private Sale', Albert's uncle called it afterwards.

But regrets, as nearly always happens, were vain.

Something had to be done.
But what?
Oswald and Alice sat in silent desperateness, and the voices of the gay and careless others came to them from the lawn, where, heartless in their youngness, they were playing tag.