principal factors in the situation, but there was no doubt that they
helped to make everything else easy. So it was that, to Rachel's great
surprise, the day after the party at Bruton Street, her mother having
told her without showing her the letter of Mrs. Feversham's invitation,
advised her to accept it, and, to the mother's still greater surprise,
the daughter, in her turn, after a slight protest, agreed to do so,
stipulating, however, that she should not be away more than twenty-four
hours. The accusation that Rachel "gadded" as much as other girls of her
age was obviously an unmerited one.

CHAPTER III

"Alone?" said Sir William, as he came into the room. "Thank Heaven! Have
you had no one?"

"Aunt Anna," Lady Gore replied, in a tone which was comment on the
statement.

"Aunt Anna? What did she come again for?" said Sir William.

"I really don't know," Lady Gore said. "I think to-day it was to tell me
that Rachel and I ought not to worship you as we do."

"I don't know what she means," said Sir William, standing from force of
habit comfortably in front of the fireplace as though there were a fire
in the grate. "I should have thought it was Rachel and I who adored
you."

"She would like that better," Lady Gore replied. "But, oh dear, what a
weary woman she is!"

"She has tired you out," Sir William said. "It really is not a good plan
that your door should be open to every bore who chooses to come and call
upon you. One ought to be able to keep people of that sort, at any rate,
out of one's house."

Lady Gore heaved a sigh.

"Well, it is rather difficult and invidious too," she said, "to try to
keep certain people out when one is not sure who is coming--and it is
rather dull not to see any one," with a little quiver of the lip which
Sir William did not perceive. Then speaking more lightly, "It is a pity
we can't have some kind of automatic arrangement at our front doors,
like the thing for testing sovereigns at the Mint, by which the heavy,
tiresome people would be shot back into the street, and the light,
amusing ones shot into the hall."

"I am quite agreeable," said Sir William, "as long as Aunt Anna is shot
back into the street."

"Ah, how delightful it would be!" said Lady Gore longingly.

"And Miss Tarlton too, please," said Sir William.

"My dear William," Lady Gore said, "Miss Tarlton is quite harmless."

"Harmless?" repeated Sir William; "I don't know what you call harmless.
The