having constructed in the park. Her
country-house must be complete with suitable amusements. She had taken
all the Wendover shooting, too, and what she could get of Lord
Graceworth's beyond. "You cannot drag people into the wilds and then
bore them to death," she said. What she most enjoyed was to scintillate
to a company of two or three, and fascinate them all into a desire for a
_tete-a-tete_, and then, when with difficulty one had secured this
privilege, to be elusive and tantalize him to death. To passion she was
a complete stranger, and won all her games because with her great beauty
she was as cold as ice.

She was not feeling perfectly content this Good Friday afternoon.
Something had happened since the evening before which had altered John
Derringham's point of view towards her. She felt it distinctly with her
senses, trained like an animal's, to scent the most subtle things in
connection with herself. It was impossible to seize, she could not
analyze it, but there it was; certainly there seemed to be some change.
He was brilliant, and had been even _empresse_ before lunch, but it
was not spontaneous, and she was not perfectly sure that it was not
assumed. It was his cleverness which attracted her. She could not see the
other side of his head--not that she would have understood what that
meant, if she had heard the phrase.

But her habit was not to sit down under an adverse circumstance, but to
probe its source and eradicate it, or, at least, counteract it. Thus,
while she chattered eloquently to Sir Tedbury Delvine, her keen brain
was weighing things. John Derringham had certainly had a look of aroused
passion in his eyes when he had pressed her hand in a lingered good
night; he had even said some words of a more advanced insinuation as to
his intentions towards her than he had ever done before. They were never
exact--always some fugitive hint to which afterwards she would try to
fix some meaning as she reviewed their meetings. She had not seen him at
breakfast because she never came down in the morning until eleven or
twelve, and he had already gone out, she heard, when she did descend.

It followed then that either he had received some disturbing letter by
the post--only one on Good Friday--or something had occurred during his
visit to his old master. It would be her business to find out which of
these two things it was. Could the Professor be married, and might there
be some woman in the family? Or was it