shell burst close to us, and a splinter knocked off my hat and tore a
corner of her veil----"

"Weren't you in a petrified fright?" demands Lessie.

"I was with her!"

"Who was she?"

A swift change of sudden, quickening, poignant emotion passes over the
still face. A sudden swelling of the white throat, a rising mist in the
golden eyes, suggests to Lessie that she has been fortunate enough to
touch upon a painful subject, and that possibly this presumptuous young
woman who has pitied a Viscountess may be going to cry! But Lynette drives
back the tears.

"She was the Reverend Mother, the Mother-Superior of the Convent where I
lived at Gueldersdorp."

"Where is she now?"

"She is with God."

"With----"

Lessie is oddly nonplussed by the calm, direct answer. People who talk in
that strangely familiar way of--of subjects that properly belong to
parsons are rare in her world. She hastens to put her next question.

"Was yours the only Convent in Gueldersdorp where young ladies were
taught?"

"It is the only Convent there."

"Did you know--among the pupils--a young person by the name of Mildare?"

There is such concentrated essence of spite in Lessie's utterance of the
name, that Lynette winces a little, and the faint, sweet colour rises in
her cheeks.

"I--know her, certainly; as far as one can be said to know oneself. My
unmarried name was Mildare."

"You--don't say so! Lord, how funny!"

The seagulls fishing in the shallows beyond the foam-line, rise up
affrighted by the shrill peal of triumphant laughter with which Lessie
makes her discovery.

"Ha, ha, ha! Talk of a situation!... On the boards I've never seen one to
touch it!" She jumps from the boulder, with more bounce than dignity,
dropping the red umbrella and the jewelled card-case, and, extending in
one pudgy ringed hand a highly-glazed and coroneted card, "Permit me to
introduce myself," she says through set teeth, smiling rancorously. "My
professional name, as I have had the honour and pleasure of explaining to
you, is Lessie Lavigne, but in private"--the dignity of the speaker's tone
is marred by its extreme huffiness--"in private I am Lady Beauvayse."

As Lynette looks in the painted, angry, piquante face she is more than
ever conscious of that feeling of antagonism. Then her eyes, turning from
it, encounter the cherub rosily sleeping on embroidered pillows, and a
rush of blood colours her to the hair. His child--his child by the
dancer-