uest. It is rather a slip speaking of it even to you; but I can trust
you not to repeat what I say. I am sure of that."

Damaris laid a hand fondly, impulsively upon the elder woman's knee.

"For certain you can trust me. For certain anything you say to me is just
between our two selves. I should never dream of repeating it."

"There speaks the precious downy owl of long ago," Mrs. Frayling brightly
cried, "bustling up in defence of its own loyalty and honour. Ah!
Damaris, how very delicious it is to have you with me!"

For, her main point having been made, she now adroitly discarded pathos.
Another word regarding her philanthropic harbourage of the young man,
Marshall Wace, remained to be spoken--but not yet. Let it come in later,
naturally and without hint of insistence.

"We must be together as much as possible during the next few weeks," she
went on--"as often as Sir Charles can be persuaded to spare you to me.
Whether the General and I shall ever make up our minds to settle down in
a home of our own, where I could ask you to stay with us, I don't know.
I'm afraid we are hopelessly nomadic. Therefore I am extra anxious to
make the most of the happy accident which has thrown us together, anxious
to get every ounce possible of intercourse out of it.--We quite
understand you have luncheon with me on Thursday, don't we?--and that you
stay and help me through the afternoon. I am always at home on Thursdays
to the neighbours. They aren't all of them conspicuously well-bred or
exciting; but I have learnt to take the rough with the smooth, the boring
along with the gifted and brilliant. India is a good school in which to
learn hospitality. The practise of that virtue becomes a habit. And I for
one quite refuse to excuse myself from further exercise of it on coming
back to Europe. The General feels with me; and we have laid ourselves out
to be civil to our compatriots here at St. Augustin this winter. A few
people were vexatiously stiff and starched at first; but each one of them
has given in, in turn. They really do, I believe, appreciate our little
social efforts."

"Who wouldn't give in to you Henrietta?" Damaris murmured.

Whereupon Mrs. Frayling delicately beamed on her; and, agreeable
unanimity of sentiment being thus established, conversation between the
two ladies for a while fell silent.

The little chestnut horses, meantime, encouraged with "Oh he-s" and "Oh
la-s" by their driver, trotted and climbed, climbe