would be unfair to blame Laura too severely. I
should suppose Mrs. Frayling excessively clever in getting her own way.
Poor Laura--even if she did know my orders, she hadn't a chance."

"Not a chance," Damaris repeated.

Once convalescence initiated, youth speedily regains its elasticity; and
Aunt Felicia with her feathers ruffled, Aunt Felicia upon the warpath
thus, presented a novel spectacle meriting observation. Evidently she and
Henrietta had badly clashed!--A nice little demon of diversion stirred
within Damaris. For the first time for many days she felt amused.

"Excessively clever," Miss Felicia continued.

--Without doubt the dear thing was finely worked up!--

"And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous
in her methods. She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments
and questions, until you find she's extracted from you a whole host of
things you never meant to say. She is far too inquisitive--too
possessive."

Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.

"Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,"
Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past
encounters.

Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece's rather
undiscoverable knee--undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy
fur-lined driving coat--lovingly, excitedly.

"If you choose to believe her, darling," she cried, "which I, for one,
emphatically don't."

Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss
Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly. She soared to
mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make
hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at
the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.

"Men aren't so easily led away," she hopefully declared. "Nor can I think
Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to
imagine. She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of
her conquests. No doubt she has been very much admired. I know she was
lovely. I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth. Dearest Charles," the
words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so
trivial a connection--"asked me to call on her as I was staying in the
neighbourhood. She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember."

"Henrietta has had four in all--counting in her maiden name, I mean."

"Exactly," Miss Felicia argued, "and