Henrietta bent down, giving her attention to an inch of kilted
silk petticoat, showing where it should not, beneath the hem of
her blue skirt.

"I hesitate to give you advice; but I can give you my impressions--for
what they may be worth. Seeing Colonel Carteret this afternoon he struck
me as being in excellent case--enviably young for his years and content."

"You thought so? Yet that's just what has worried me. Once or twice
lately I have not been sure he was quite content."

"Oh! you put it too high!" Henrietta threw off. "Can one ever be sure
anyone--even one's own poor self--is quite content?"

And she looked round, bringing the whole artillery of her still great, if
waning, loveliness suddenly to bear upon Damaris, dazzling, charming,
confusing her, as she said:

"My precious child, has it never occurred to you Colonel Carteret may
stay on, not against has will, but very much with it? Or occurred to you,
further, not only that the pleasures of your father's society are by no
means to be despised; but that you yourself are a rather remarkable
product--as quaintly engagingly clever, as you are--well--shall we
say--handsome, Damaris?"

"I am deputed to enquire whether you propose to take tea indoors, Miss
Verity, or have it brought to you here; and, in the latter case, whether
we have leave to join you?"

The speaker, Marshall Wace--a young man of about thirty years of age--may
be described as soft in make, in colouring slightly hectic, in manner a
subtle cross between the theatrical and the parsonic. Which, let it be
added, is by no means to condemn him wholesale, laugh him off the stage
or out of the pulpit. In certain circles, indeed, these traits, this
blend, won for him unstinted sympathy and approval. He possessed talents
in plenty, and these of an order peculiarly attractive to the amateur
because tentative rather than commanding. Among his intimates he was seen
and spoken of as one cloaked with the pathos of thwarted aspirations.
Better health, less meagre private means and a backing of influence, what
might he not have done? His star might have flamed to the zenith!
Meanwhile it was a privilege to help him, to such extent as his extreme
delicacy of feeling permitted. That it really permitted a good deal, one
way or another, displaying considerable docility under the infliction of
benefits, would have been coarse to perceive and unpardonably brutal to
mention.--Such, anyhow, was the opinion held by