n old grievance.

"It's your own fault, you know; your own fault! I'm always talking to
you about it. She won't make friends, Peignton! Lived within a couple
of miles of Chumley all these years, and hasn't a single friend. Says
there's no one to know. Rubbish! Don't tell me... Lots of 'em, if she
took the trouble to find out. Too proud, that's the size of it, and
they know it, and it gets 'em on the raw. She's made herself jolly
unpopular, that's what she's done. You can't deny that you have made
yourself unpopular!"

"I am quite the most unpopular woman in the neighbourhood," Cassandra
said, with the sideways tilt of the chin which Dane was beginning to
recognise. "It's humiliating, but I can't see that I am to blame. I
bore the Chumley people, and they bore me, and if I'm to be bored at
all, I so very much prefer to do it for myself. I don't complain of
being alone."

"Oh, yes, you do. Not in words, perhaps. There are a jolly lot of ways
in which a woman can rub it in," cried the Squire with a shrewdness at
which Cassandra laughed with unruffled good-nature.

"Poor Bernard! Have I rubbed it in? Never mind! Grizel Beverley is
going to prove a host in herself, and Captain Peignton is giving me a
whole afternoon, and I've been at the church for over an hour,
decorating, and talking prettily to the other helpers. Things are
looking up. Who knows! I may be quite sociable by the end of another
year!"

But the Squire refused to be cajoled.

"Lots of 'em!" he repeated pugilistically. "Lots. All those houses,
and a woman in each. Don't tell me! What's the matter with Mrs
Mawson? What's the matter with Miss Mawle? What's the matter with the
Baxters, or the Gardiners, or Mrs Evans?"

"I like Mrs Evans. I think I almost _love_ the real Mrs Evans,"
Cassandra said thoughtfully. "I have always a feeling that if I were in
trouble the real Mrs Evans would understand. But one so seldom gets a
glimpse of her!"

"Don't understand what you are talking about. Who else do you get a
glimpse of?"

"The Vicar's wife," said Cassandra, and rising from the table put an end
to the discussion.

After lunch the two men sat together smoking and talking, but before the
end of half an hour Peignton grew restless, and cast about in his mind
for an excuse to escape. Would Lady Cassandra come for him, or was he
supposed to search for Lady Cassandra? In any case the best of the day
was passing, and it was foll