er, through the resounding
Paris streets, to pay her devoirs to her former guardians and teachers at
the convent school; and, later returning, had spoken to her of the safety
of religion, the high worth of the doctrine and practice of a definite
historic creed.

Her relation to her father appeared--and this pained Carteret--to lack
its old intimacy, its intensity of consideration and tenderness. Her
interest in the child of his brain, his belated literary experiment, was
less sustained and spontaneous. How could it flourish in its former
proportions when she was so much away, so often absent from morning till
night?--Not without leave though, for she scrupulously asked permission
before answering Henrietta's gay call and taking part in that lady's
junketings and jaunts. Sir Charles never refused the requested
permission; but, while granting it, did he not tend to retreat into his
former sardonic humour, fall into long silences, become inaccessible
again and remote? The book went forward; yet, more than once recently,
Carteret had questioned whether his friend would ever get himself fairly
delivered of the admirable volume were not he--Carteret--permanently at
hand to act midwife. An unpleasant idea pursued him that Sir Charles
went, in some strange fashion, in fear of Damaris, of her criticism, her
judgment. Yet fear seemed a hatefully strong and ugly word to employ as
between a father and daughter so straitly, heretofore, bound to one
another in love.

And then--there lay the heart of the worry, proving him only too likely a
graceless jealous middle-age curmudgeon, a senile sentimentalist, thus
did he upbraidingly mock himself--were there not signs of Damaris
developing into a rather thorough paced coquette? She accepted the homage
offered her with avidity, with many small airs and graces--_a la_
Henrietta--of a quite novel sort. Old General Frayling--poor pathetic old
warrior--was her slave. Peregrine Ditton, Harry Ellice, even the cleric
Binning--let alone the permanently self-conscious, attitudinizing
Wace--with other newer acquaintances, English and foreign, ran at her
heels. And she let them run, bless her, even encouraged their running by
turns of naughty disdain and waywardness. She was fatal to boys--that was
in the natural course of things. And fatal to those considerably older
than boys--perhaps--

The music flew faster and faster--stopped with a shriek and a crash.
Laughing, talking, the dancers streamed