ld gods had arrived and been unpacked while
she was in the country, and she occupied herself during this solitary
day in London with the arrangement of them. There were not many, for she
did not tend to buy, but there were a few "bits of things" which she had
got in Rome, a Cinque-cento bas-relief, a couple of Florentine copies of
the Della Robbia heads, and some few pieces of Italian needlework. All
these took some little time to dispose satisfactorily in the room, and
that done, she proceeded to the arrangement of her writing-table. She
liked to have photographs there: there was one of Daisy and Diana, two
mites of ten years old and four years old, lovingly entwined, Daisy's
head resting on her sister's shoulder; there was one of Victor as he was
now, and another as he had been when an Eton boy; there were half a
dozen others, and among them one of Diana, signed and dated, which Diana
had given her hardly more than a year ago in Paris.

All this arranging took up the greater part of the day, and she kept
herself to her work, forcing her mind away from those things which
really occupied it, and making it attend to the manual business of
putting books in shelves and pictures on the walls; but about tea-time
there was nothing more to occupy her here, and by degrees her thoughts
drifted back to Bray and her friends--or were they enemies?--there. It
was no use thinking of it or them, for there was nothing more to be
contrived or planned or acted, no problem for her to dig at, no crisis
to avert.

She had finished everything, and there was nothing left for her to do
except be silent, and hope perhaps by degrees to win Daisy back again.
How Daisy reconstructed things in her own mind Jeannie did not know,
and, indeed, the details of such reconstruction she did not particularly
want to know. She had taken Lord Lindfield away from the girl, for a
mere caprice, apparently, for the love of annexation characteristic of
flirts, while all the time she was engaged to Victor Braithwaite. And
having made mischief like this, she had run away. It was like a child
who, having from sheer wantonness set fire to something, runs to a safe
distance and watches it burn.

Jeannie had ordered the carriage to come round at six to take her for a
drive, and a few minutes before, though it was barely six yet, she had
heard something drive up and stop at the door, and supposed that before
long her maid would tell her that it was round. Even as she t