er point, and the curtain, dramatically speaking, should have
descended. But in real life the curtain did not descend; life insisted
that there were no such things as curtains; it made one go on. She
knew, too, that Lindfield would not take this as final; she had to
think of something which should make it final. In any case she could
not contemplate stopping in the house, with him there, and decided to
go back to town to-morrow, cutting her stay here short by a day. She
would go early, before any one was down; Alice would invent and
explain for her.

A note, hastily scribbled, settled this. "It is done, Alice," she wrote,
"and I feel satisfied and utterly miserable. Daisy does not exist for
him. I shall go back to town early to-morrow, dear. Will you make some
excuse? I know you will understand."

But the more important matter was not settled so easily. She had to show
poor Lindfield unmistakably that her rejection of him was quite
irrevocable. What interpretation he put on her conduct mattered but
little, as long as he clearly understood that. And then a means occurred
to her which was quite simple and quite sufficient. She wrote a couple
of lines to Victor.

"My dearest," she said, "I must go to town early to-morrow, and shall
not see you till you come up the day after. And I want you to announce
our engagement at once. I should like it to be in the evening papers
to-morrow. Tell them yourself down here. I write this in great haste.
All love."

Jeannie rang for her maid to get these delivered, dismissed her for the
night, and sat down to think over what she had done. She was still
tremulous from it. To a man she really liked, and to a girl whom she
tenderly loved, she had made herself vile, but it was still her sincere
hope that neither would ever know the reason for what she had done. They
must write her down a flirt; they had every reason for doing so.

She rose and looked at herself a moment in the long mirror beside the
dressing-table. "You beast!" she said to herself. But there was another
thought as well. "Diana, my dear," she said, as if comforting her.

* * * * *

It had been settled that Jeannie was to live with Lady Nottingham till
the end of the season, and the latter had given her two charming rooms
in the Grosvenor Square house, so that she could make things home-like
about her for the few weeks before she would go down to her own house in
the country. Little househo