ngs and acting a
drama with her imagination. Philip detests Giddy. She will pay him
out and go.

Glad of anything to divert the current of her thoughts, she snatches up
a small fur cap in the hall, which rests becomingly on Eleanor's wealth
of waving hair. Flinging a long red cloak around her, she slips out of
the house, and rings at the widow's door.

"I hope she is alone. I don't feel in the mood to compass Bertie's
inane conversation," thinks Mrs. Roche as the flaxen maid shows her in.

The twilight has gathered, but there is no lamp, as Giddy rustles
forward in a lavender tea-gown to greet Eleanor.

"You are a very bad child," she says holding up her finger, "but we've
found you out, and shown you up most shockingly. What right have you
to break hearts, as if they were only _bric-a-brac_, and say 'Not at
home' when you were probably gourmandising over the huge Buzzard cake
we ordered in town?"

Eleanor cannot speak, for Carol Quinton rises, and looks reproachfully
into her eyes. She feels like a hunted stag, and yet she is
glad--relieved.

"There! now you are in a hole," continues Giddy, laughing, "with no
time to invent a plausible excuse. But come and sit down and ask
forgiveness. I dare say Carol will get over it."

As yet Eleanor has not spoken. She walks like one in a trance to the
quaint old chair Mrs. Mounteagle draws forward. She sits down
mechanically and gazes at the colours in the carpet, just as she did
once before at the Butterflies' Club.

"What a poor little world it is!" she thinks, "just like a muddy,
narrow lane, through which its puppets drive or run, with the dirt
thrown up in their faces at every turn."

"Come! do not look so glum over it," coos Giddy, removing Eleanor's
cloak. "Carol knows as well as I do what a row you have been in, and
how rusty Mr. Roche has turned. We are both most terribly sorry for
you. I am sure I don't know how you stand him. It does so remind me
of my late husband, from whom I was separated by mutual agreement two
years before his death. Our quarrels began much in the same way. I
preferred a will of my own, and meant to have it. He would have
treated me like the chickens cooped up in the yard--a useful addition
to his table, only their part was the most enviable. I should not have
minded being cooked and roasted, for there my sorrows would have
ceased."

"Death must be very pleasant," says Eleanor slowly, her head turning
lightly to the