ost unfortunately attractive
creature--quite a charming face."

Agatha said quietly:

"Mother, if she was divorced, I don't think Eustace would."

"There's that, certainly," murmured Lady Valleys; "hope for the best!"

"Don't you even know which way it was?" said Lady Casterley.

"Well, the vicar says she did the divorcing. But he's very charitable;
it may be as Agatha hopes."

"I detest vagueness. Why doesn't someone ask the woman?"

"You shall come with me, Granny dear, and ask her yourself; you will do
it so nicely."

Lady Casterley looked up.

"We shall see," she said. Something struggled with the autocratic
criticism in her eyes. No more than the rest of the world could she help
indulging Barbara. As one who believed in the divinity of her order, she
liked this splendid child. She even admired--though admiration was not
what she excelled in--that warm joy in life, as of some great nymph,
parting the waves with bare limbs, tossing from her the foam of breakers.
She felt that in this granddaughter, rather than in the good Agatha, the
patrician spirit was housed. There were points to Agatha, earnestness
and high principle; but something morally narrow and over-Anglican
slightly offended the practical, this-worldly temper of Lady Casterley.
It was a weakness, and she disliked weakness. Barbara would never be
squeamish over moral questions or matters such as were not really,
essential to aristocracy. She might, indeed, err too much the other way
from sheer high spirits. As the impudent child had said: "If people had
no pasts, they would have no futures." And Lady Casterley could not bear
people without futures. She was ambitious; not with the low ambition of
one who had risen from nothing, but with the high passion of one on the
top, who meant to stay there.

"And where have you been meeting this--er--anonymous creature?" she
asked.

Barbara came from the hearth, and bending down beside Lady Casterley's
chair, seemed to envelop her completely.

"I'm all right, Granny; she couldn't corrupt me."

Lady Casterley's face peered out doubtfully from that warmth, wearing a
look of disapproving pleasure.

"I know your wiles!" she said. "Come, now!"

"I see her about. She's nice to look at. We talk."

Again with that hurried quietness Agatha said:

"My dear Babs, I do think you ought to wait."

"My dear Angel, why? What is it to me if she's had four husbands?"

Agatha bit her lips, and Lady