wonder nervously who
the new-comers might be. Probably she would be spared the embarrassment
of finding old acquaintances among them; but it was odd that her
daughter had mentioned no names.

Leila had proposed that, later in the afternoon, Wilbour should take
her mother for a drive: she said she wanted them to have a "nice, quiet
talk." But Mrs. Lidcote wished her talk with Leila to come first, and
had, moreover, at luncheon, caught stray allusions to an impending
tennis-match in which her son-in-law was engaged. Her fatigue had been a
sufficient pretext for declining the drive, and she had begged Leila to
think of her as peacefully resting in her room till such time as they
could snatch their quiet moment.

"Before tea, then, you duck!" Leila with a last kiss had decided; and
presently Mrs. Lidcote, through her open window, had heard the fresh
loud voices of her daughter's visitors chiming across the gardens from
the tennis-court.

IV

Leila had come and gone, and they had had their talk. It had not lasted
as long as Mrs. Lidcote wished, for in the middle of it Leila had been
summoned to the telephone to receive an important message from town, and
had sent word to her mother that she couldn't come back just then,
as one of the young ladies had been called away unexpectedly and
arrangements had to be made for her departure. But the mother and
daughter had had almost an hour together, and Mrs. Lidcote was happy.
She had never seen Leila so tender, so solicitous. The only thing that
troubled her was the very excess of this solicitude, the exaggerated
expression of her daughter's annoyance that their first moments together
should have been marred by the presence of strangers.

"Not strangers to me, darling, since they're friends of yours," her
mother had assured her.

"Yes; but I know your feeling, you queer wild mother. I know how you've
always hated people." (_Hated people!_ Had Leila forgotten why?)
"And that's why I told Susy that if you preferred to go with her to
Ridgefield on Sunday I should perfectly understand, and patiently wait
for our good hug. But you didn't really mind them at luncheon, did you,
dearest?"

Mrs. Lidcote, at that, had suddenly thrown a startled look at her
daughter. "I don't mind things of that kind any longer," she had simply
answered.

"But that doesn't console me for having exposed you to the bother of it,
for having let you come here when I ought to have _ordered_ you off