uite simply and truthfully. This would have cleared up the
mist but spoilt the feeling of wrong-doing.

Lady Thistleton was large and recumbent and averse to sight-seeing, but
after a heart-to-heart talk with her daughters had seen to it that
Damaris had no time for moping.

Damaris went here, there and everywhere; played tennis; paid
duty-calls, as you must when somebody extends her wing-feathers as
shelter; acted in charades; attended concerts; and was thoroughly
miserable.

Jane Coop was miserable too; so was the bulldog, and, through a certain
unconfessed and indefinable vigilance they both felt called upon to
exercise in behalf of their beloved mistress, were distinctly nervy.

"Drat the men!" had said the maid, giving pithy verbal expression to
the ragged state of her nerves as she cut the stalks of the beautiful
flowers which came daily without name or message. The dog's method of
expressing himself was somewhat more violent; it consisted of the
sudden seizure between his great teeth of the posterior portion of the
nether garments of low-caste males, white or coloured.

You could almost tell the status of the male bipeds by casting a
discreet eye upon their raiment, and as there was not a muzzle in Egypt
big enough to fit the dog, it had ended in him being led or chained in
polite society.

Damaris's table was next that of the Thistletons, who, with a vague
memory maybe of their duty towards their neighbour as instilled on
Sundays into their rebellious infantile heads, chatted brightly to
right and to left of them at meals.

Full of the milk of human kindness, they allowed it to overflow into
their writhing neighbours' jugs.

They broke through the glacial atmosphere which surrounds the
Britisher's breakfast-table; newspaper propped against jam-pot was no
barrier; their gladsome invitations or suggestions, dammed for the
moment, would rise at last level with the paper's edge to trickle down
the other side and mingle with the eggs and bacon, porridge, kidneys,
or whatever trifle the plate might contain.

They read out scraps of news from the morning paper; they read out bits
of home news from their stacks of correspondence, written for the most
part on eight pages and in the sprawling, uncontrolled script of the
woman who has nothing but trivialities with which to fill her day.

Their blood was blue, their upbringing beyond suspicion; they simply
erred through a too-generous supply of the above-menti