o sight altogether. Instead
there was a growing conviction that if ever she sold anything it would
be a certain sapphire and diamond ring which she didn't like and never
wore that Sir Isaac had given her as a birthday present two years ago.
But of course she would never dream of selling anything; at the utmost
she need but pawn. She reflected and decided that on the whole it would
be wiser not to ask Peters how one pawned. It occurred to her to consult
the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ on the subject, but though she learnt that
the Chinese pawnshops must not charge more than three per cent. per
annum, that King Edward the Third pawned his jewels in 1338 and that
Father Bernardino di Feltre who set up pawnshops in Assisi and Padua and
Pavia was afterward canonized, she failed to get any very clear idea of
the exact ritual of the process. And then suddenly she remembered that
she knew a finished expert in pawnshop work in the person of Susan
Burnet. Susan could tell her everything. She found some curtains in the
study that needed replacement, consulted Mrs. Crumble and, with a view
to economizing her own resources, made that lady send off an urgent
letter to Susan bidding her come forthwith.

Sec.3

It has been said that Fate is a plagiarist. Lady Harman's Fate at any
rate at this juncture behaved like a benevolent plagiarist who was also
a little old-fashioned. This phase of speechless hostility was
complicated by the fact that two of the children fell ill, or at least
seemed for a couple of days to be falling ill. By all the rules of
British sentiment, this ought to have brought about a headlong
reconciliation at the tumbled bedside. It did nothing of the sort; it
merely wove fresh perplexities into the tangled skein of her thoughts.

On the day after her participation in that forbidden lunch Millicent,
her eldest daughter, was discovered with a temperature of a hundred and
one, and then Annette, the third, followed suit with a hundred. This
carried Lady Harman post haste to the nursery, where to an unprecedented
degree she took command. Latterly she had begun to mistrust the physique
of her children and to doubt whether the trained efficiency of Mrs.
Harblow the nurse wasn't becoming a little blunted at the edges by
continual use. And the tremendous quarrel she had afoot made her keenly
resolved not to let anything go wrong in the nursery and less disposed
than she usually was to leave things to her husband's servants