erley looked down at the debris of the insect.

"Disgusting!" she said; but when she next spoke it was in a less hard,
more querulous voice.

"That man--what was his name--have you got rid of him?"

Barbara went crimson.

"Abuse my friends, and I will go straight home and never speak to you
again."

For a moment Lady Casterley looked almost as if she might strike her
granddaughter; then a little sardonic smile broke out on her face.

"A creditable sentiment!" she said.

Letting fall her uncle's hand, Barbara cried:

"In any case, I'd better go. I don't know why you sent for me."

Lady Casterley answered coldly:

"To let you and your mother know of this woman's most unselfish
behaviour; to put you on the 'qui vive' for what Eustace may do now; to
give you a chance to make up for your folly. Moreover to warn you
against----" she paused.

"Yes?"

"Let me----" interrupted Lord Dennis.

"No, Uncle Dennis, let Granny take her shoe!"

She had withdrawn against the wall, tall, and as it were, formidable,
with her head up. Lady Casterley remained silent.

"Have you got it ready?" cried Barbara: "Unfortunately he's flown!"

A voice said:

"Lord Miltoun."

He had come in quietly and quickly, preceding the announcement, and stood
almost touching that little group at the window before they caught sight
of him. His face had the rather ghastly look of sunburnt faces from
which emotion has driven the blood; and his eyes, always so much the most
living part of him, were full of such stabbing anger, that involuntarily
they all looked down.

"I want to speak to you alone," he said to Lady Casterley.

Visibly, for perhaps the first time in her life, that indomitable little
figure flinched. Lord Dennis drew Barbara away, but at the door he
whispered:

"Stay here quietly, Babs; I don't like the look of this."

Unnoticed, Barbara remained hovering.

The two voices, low, and so far off in the long white room, were
uncannily distinct, emotion charging each word with preternatural power
of penetration; and every movement of the speakers had to the girl's
excited eyes a weird precision, as of little figures she had once seen at
a Paris puppet show. She could hear Miltoun reproaching his grandmother
in words terribly dry and bitter. She edged nearer and nearer, till,
seeing that they paid no more heed to her than if she were an attendant
statue, she had regained her position by the window.

Lady Casterley was