think it would be rather a good plan if you were
to come and live here and manage affairs--morals, manners, hygiene, and
everything?"

Henriette's needles stopped abruptly, and a wave of colour came into her
face, and a gleam of sudden joy to her eyes.

"My dear, what do you mean?"

"Hubert, of course, would be only too delighted to have you here, and I
want to go away."

"For heaven's sake----"

"Not exactly for heaven's sake. For my own sake, I suppose: frankly
selfish. It is, perhaps, the particular form that my selfishness
takes--an unfortunately conspicuous form. So many of us can have a nice
cosy pocket edition that doesn't show. However, that's not the point. I
know you would be happier doing this than anything else, and that you
would do it perfectly. You have the kind of talent, if I may say so,
that makes an admirable ruler. When it has a large political field we
call it 'administrative ability'; when it has a small domestic one, we
speak of it as 'good housekeeping.' It is a precious quality, wherever
it appears. You have no scope for it at present."

Henriette was bewildered, horrified, yet secretly thrilled with joy on
her own account. Was there a quarrel? Had any cloud come over the
happiness of the home? Hadria laughed and assured her to the contrary.
But where was she going, and for how long? What did she intend to do?
Did Hubert approve? And could she bear to be away from her children?
Hadria thought this was all beside the point, especially as the boys
were shortly going to school. The question was, whether Henriette would
take the charge.

Certainly, if Hadria came to any such mad decision, but that, Henriette
hoped, might be averted. What _would_ people say? Further discussion was
checked by a call from Mrs. Walker, whom Hadria had the audacity to
consult on questions of education and hygiene, leading her, by dexterous
generalship, almost over the same ground that she had traversed herself,
inducing the unconscious lady to repeat, with amazing accuracy, Hadria's
own reproduction of local views.

"Now _am_ I without authority in my ideas?" she asked, after Mrs. Walker
had departed. Henriette had to admit that she had at least one
supporter.

"But I believe," she added, "that your practice is better than your
preaching."

"It seems to be an ordinance of Nature," said Hadria, "that these things
shall never correspond."

CHAPTER XXXI.

Hadria said nothing more about her project,