an entirely new and
recently-discovered kind of bounder.

He hated the double game. It didn't amuse him a bit. But now he felt he
was free for a month's holiday, during which he had, however, the
unpleasant holiday task of breaking the news to Valentia.

He was driving home, but changed his mind and called out to the cabman
to drive to Valentia's house.

He found her trying on furs--furs in mid-summer!

She greeted the arrival of his exquisite discrimination and taste with
clapped hands, soft, beaming eyes, and her smile--Valentia's smile. Miss
Walmer couldn't smile at all--she didn't know how. She could only
laugh.

CHAPTER XVI

MRS. FOSTER

Daphne had come to say good-bye to Mrs. Foster.

This lady lived in a kind of model cottage in a garden in Ham Common. It
was not at all like the ideal, 'quaint' model cottages that one sees
advertised by well-known firms of furnishers, though it might have been.
Mrs. Foster was rebellious to Waring, and sincerely disliked anything
modern.

The little drawing-room, and indeed every other room in the house, was
principally furnished by photographs and groups of her son Cyril--Cyril
as a very plain boy, in a skirt, with hardly any eyes or hair, and a
pout; Cyril as a 'perfect pet' of a sailor, at six. Then Cyril in
cricketing groups (how he stood out against the other ordinary
boys!)--in Etons (looking neat and supercilious), and then in his
uniform, in which he looked simply lovely.

Daphne had an intense and growing desire to please his mother. In fact,
curiously, she was more anxious to gain her approbation than that of
Cyril himself. To this end she usually remade her hats, when possible,
in the train on her way to Ham Common, and her pocket when she arrived
there was usually filled with artificial flowers, feathers, or other
ornaments that she had taken off her hat, so as to look simple. Also she
turned it down all the way round to make it look as if it were merely a
protection from the sun--not a hat.

To-day she wore a pink-spotted muslin dress and a straw hat, with pink
ribbon. She certainly looked extremely pretty, and not at all what she
had such a dread of before Mrs. Foster, smart. Mrs. Foster had a horror
of smartness in the _jeune fille_.

Daphne delighted her. She was a very sentimental woman, with a strong
theoretical bias for the practical. She was by way of teaching Daphne
housekeeping and how to manage on a small income (of which art she kn