re comes along, there's
bound to be a committee meeting in the way! Half an hour! Pleased,
indeed! I've always been longing for Ralph to take me drives, and now
that he has been disappointed like this, the very first time, is he
likely to try again? Of course, Evelyn" (tardy sense of hospitality!)
"I am glad for you to have the change. It's awfully good of him."

"Quite heroic, isn't it?" I said tartly, as I turned into my room. No
doubt the poor man was disappointed, but she need not have rubbed it in!
I leave it to psychologists to decide whether or no there was any
connection between my natural annoyance at the slight, and the fact that
I went to the trouble of opening a special box in order to put on my
best and newest motor bonnet and coat; but there it is, I did do it, and
they were all the more becoming for the accompaniment of flushed cheeks
and extra bright eyes. The colour was a soft dove grey, the bonnet a
delicious concoction of drawn silk, which looked as if it had begun life
meaning to adorn a Quaker's head, and had then suddenly succumbed to the
fascinations of a pink lining and a wreath of tiny pink roses. When
Delphine came into the room a moment later, she stopped short on the
threshold, and gasped with astonishment.

"Goodness!" Her face flushed, she stared with wide, bright eyes;
admiring, critical, disapproving, all at once. "Evelyn, what a get up!
I never saw anything like it. You look--you look--"

"Well! How do I look?"

There was an edge in my voice. She felt it, and softened at once, in
her quick lovable fashion.

"You look a duck! Simply a duck. But, my dear, it's too good! Why
waste it here? Any old thing will do for these lanes. There's time to
change!"

"I don't intend to change," I said obstinately, and at that very moment
there sounded an imperious whistle from below. Without another word we
marched downstairs and out to the front gate, where the two men stood
waiting beside the car. Automatically their eyes rolled towards my
bonnet; the Vicar smiled, and bent his head in a courtly little bow,
which said much without the banality of words. The Squire had no
expression! Whether he approved, disapproved, or furiously disliked, he
remained insoluble as the Sphinx. Oh, some day--somehow--some one--I
hope, will wake him into life, and whoever she is, may she shake him
well up, and ride rough-shod over him for a long, long time before she
gives in! He _needs_ tak