y Tailleur's society. She
had no means of measuring the lengths to which Kitty had gone and might
yet go. She was simply possessed, driven and lashed by her vision of
Kitty as she had seen her yesterday; Kitty standing at the end of the
garden, on the watch for Mr. Lucy; Kitty returning, triumphant, with the
young man at her heels.

She had seen Kitty with other men before, but there was something in
this particular combination that she could not bear to think of. All the
same, she had lain awake half the night thinking of it. She had Kitty
Tailleur and Mr. Lucy on her nerves.

She had desired a pretext for approaching Miss Lucy, and poor Kitty was
a pretext made to her hand. Nothing could be more appealing than the
spectacle of helpless innocence struggling with a problem as terrible as
Kitty. Miss Keating knew all the time that as far as she was concerned
there was no problem. If she disliked being with Kitty she had nothing
to do but to pack up and go. Kitty had said in the beginning that if she
didn't like her she must go.

That course was obvious but unattractive. And the most obvious and most
unattractive thing about it was that it would not have brought her any
further with the Lucys. It would, in fact, have removed her altogether
from their view.

But she had done for herself now with the Lucys. She should have kept
her nerves to herself, rasped, as they were to a treacherous tenuity.
And as the state of her nerves was owing to Kitty, she held Kitty
responsible for the crisis. She writhed as she thought of it. She
writhed as she thought of Mr. Lucy. She writhed as she thought of Kitty;
and writhing, she rubbed her own venom into her hurt.

Of course she would have to leave Kitty now.

But, if she did, the alternatives were grim. She would have either to go
back to her own people, or to look after somebody's children, or an
invalid. Her own people were not interested in Miss Keating. Children
and invalids demanded imperatively that she should be interested in
them. And Miss Keating, unfortunately, was not interested in anybody
but herself.

So interested was she that she had forgotten the old lady who sat
knitting in the window, who, distracted by Miss Lucy's outburst, had let
her ball roll on to the floor. It rolled away across the room to Miss
Keating's feet, and there was a great tangle in the wool. Miss Keating
picked up the ball and brought it to the old lady, winding and
disentangling it as she wen