rtly because she made it a point
never to doubt the word of a man, either by suspicion or inference, who
was attentive to her. This time she did care, and she intended to tell
him so. All she dreaded was that the big horns and the tom-toms would
get away from her leadership and the hoped-for, correctly played
symphony end in an uproar.

"Max," she said, turning her head and lifting her finger at him with
the movement of a conductor's baton, "how can you lie to me like that?
You never went near your lawyer; you went to see Miss Billeton, and
you've spent every minute with her since you left me. Don't tell me you
didn't. I know everything you've done, and--" Bass drums, bass viols,
bassoons--everything--was loose now.

She had given up her child to be with him! Everything, in fact--all her
people at Yardley; her dear old nurse. She had lied to Jane about
chaperoning Sue--all to come down and keep him from being lonely. What
she wanted was a certain confidence in return. It made not the
slightest difference to her how many women he loved, or how many women
loved him; she didn't love him, and she never would; but unless she was
treated differently from a child and like the woman that she was, she
was going straight back to Yardley, and then back to Paris, etc., etc.

She knew, as she rushed on in a flood of abuse such as only a woman can
let loose when she is thoroughly jealous and entirely angry, that she
was destroying the work of months of plotting, and that he would be
lost to her forever, but she was powerless to check the torrent of her
invective. Only when her breath gave out did she stop.

Max had sat still through it all, his eyes expressing first
astonishment and then a certain snap of admiration, as he saw the color
rising and falling in her cheeks. It was not the only time in his
experience that he had had to face similar outbursts. It was the first
time, however, that he had not felt like striking back. Other women's
outbreaks had bored him and generally had ended his interest in
them--this one was more charming than ever. He liked, too, her American
pluck and savage independence. Jealous she certainly was, but there was
no whine about it; nor was there any flop at the close--floppy women he
detested--had always done so. Lucy struck straight out from her
shoulder and feared nothing.

As she raged on, the grays beating the water with their well-polished
hoofs, he continued to sit perfectly still, never movi