ut too!'

Desmond pulled down the blind again, and they went back to the fire,
sitting on the floor beside it, with their arms round each other, as
they had been used to do as children. And then in a low voice, lest
any ears in the sleeping house should be, after all, on the alert,
he told her what he had seen in the library. He was rather ashamed
of telling her; only there was this queer sense of last words--of
responsibility--for his sister, which excused it.

Pamela listened despondently.

'Perhaps they're engaged already! Well,--I can tell you this--if
father does marry her, she'll rule him, and me--if I give her the
chance--and everybody on the place, with a rod of iron.'

Desmond at first remonstrated. He had been taken aback by the sudden
vision in the library; and Pamela's letters for some time past had
tended to alter his first liking for 'Broomie' into a feeling more
distrustful and uncertain. But, after all, Broomie's record must be
remembered. 'She wouldn't sign that codicil thing--she made father
climb down about the gates--and Sir Henry says she's begun to pull
the estate together like anything, and if father will only let her
alone for a year or two she'll make him a rich man.'

'Oh, I know,' said Pamela gloomily, 'she's paid most of the bills
already. When I go into Fallerton now--everybody--all the tradesmen
are as sweet as sugar.'

'Well, that's something to the good, isn't it? Don't be unfair!'

'I'm not unfair!' cried Pamela. 'Don't you see how she just swallows
up everybody's attention--how nobody else matters when she's
there! How, can you expect _me_ to like that--if she were an
archangel--which she isn't!'

'But has she done anything nasty--anything to bother you?'

'Well, of course, I'm just a cypher when she's there. I'm afraid I
oughtn't to mind--but I do!'

And Pamela, with her hands round her knees, stared into the fire in
bitterness of spirit. She couldn't explain, even to Desmond, that
the inward eye all the time was tormented by two kindred
visions--Arthur in the hall that afternoon, talking war work with
Elizabeth with such warm and eager deference, and Arthur on Holme
Hill, stretched at Elizabeth's feet, and bandying classical chaff
with her. And there was a third, still more poignant, of a future in
which Elizabeth would be always there, the centre of the picture,
mistress of the house, the clever and charming woman, beside whom
girls in their teens had no chance.

She w