istinct
rebuff, Barbara quivered, as though she had been touched lightly with a
whip. Her lips closed firmly, her eyes began to dance. "Very well, my
dear," she thought. But presently stealing a look at him, she became
aware of such a queer expression on his face, that she forgot she was
offended.

"Is anything wrong, Mr. Courtier?"

"Yes, Lady Barbara, something is very wrong--that miserable mean thing,
the human tongue."

Barbara had an intuitive knowledge of how to handle things, a kind of
moral sangfroid, drawn in from the faces she had watched, the talk she
had heard, from her youth up. She trusted those intuitions, and letting
her eyes conspire with his over Ann's brown hair, she said:

"Anything to do with Mrs. N-----?" Seeing "Yes" in his eyes, she added
quickly: "And M-----?"

Courtier nodded.

"I thought that was coming. Let them babble! Who cares?"

She caught an approving glance, and the word, "Good!"

But the car had drawn up at Bucklandbury Station.

The little grey figure of Lady Casterley, coming out of the station
doorway, showed but slight sign of her long travel. She stopped to take
the car in, from chauffeur to Courtier.

"Well, Frith!--Mr. Courtier, is it? I know your book, and I don't
approve of you; you're a dangerous man--How do you do? I must have those
two bags. The cart can bring the rest.... Randle, get up in front, and
don't get dusty. Ann!" But Ann was already beside the chauffeur, having
long planned this improvement. "H'm! So you've hurt your leg, sir?
Keep still! We can sit three.... Now, my dear, I can kiss you! You've
grown!"

Lady Casterley's kiss, once received, was never forgotten; neither
perhaps was Barbara's. Yet they were different. For, in the case of
Lady Casterley, the old eyes, bright and investigating, could be seen
deciding the exact spot for the lips to touch; then the face with its
firm chin was darted forward; the lips paused a second, as though to make
quite certain, then suddenly dug hard and dry into the middle of the
cheek, quavered for the fraction of a second as if trying to remember to
be soft, and were relaxed like the elastic of a catapult. And in the case
of Barbara, first a sort of light came into her eyes, then her chin
tilted a little, then her lips pouted a little, her body quivered, as if
it were getting a size larger, her hair breathed, there was a small sweet
sound; it was over.

Thus kissing her grandmother, Barbara