into the open portals.

X

What do you intend to do? You will grant that I have a right to ask you
that.'

'To do? I shall do as I have always done--not so badly, as it seems to
me.'

This colloquy took place in Mrs. Berrington's room, in the early morning
hours, after Selina's return from the entertainment to which reference
was last made. Her sister came home before her--she found herself
incapable of 'going on' when Selina quitted the house in Park Lane at
which they had dined. Mrs. Berrington had the night still before her,
and she stepped into her carriage with her usual air of graceful
resignation to a brilliant lot. She had taken the precaution, however,
to provide herself with a defence, against a little sister bristling
with righteousness, in the person of Mrs. Collingwood, to whom she
offered a lift, as they were bent upon the same business and Mr.
Collingwood had a use of his own for his brougham. The Collingwoods were
a happy pair who could discuss such a divergence before their friends
candidly, amicably, with a great many 'My loves' and 'Not for the
worlds.' Lionel Berrington disappeared after dinner, without holding any
communication with his wife, and Laura expected to find that he had
taken the carriage, to repay her in kind for her having driven off from
Grosvenor Place without him. But it was not new to the girl that he
really spared his wife more than she spared him; not so much perhaps
because he wouldn't do the 'nastiest' thing as because he couldn't.
Selina could always be nastier. There was ever a whimsicality in her
actions: if two or three hours before it had been her fancy to keep a
third person out of the carriage she had now her reasons for bringing
such a person in. Laura knew that she would not only pretend, but would
really believe, that her vindication of her conduct on their way to
dinner had been powerful and that she had won a brilliant victory. What
need, therefore, to thresh out further a subject that she had chopped
into atoms? Laura Wing, however, had needs of her own, and her remaining
in the carriage when the footman next opened the door was intimately
connected with them.

'I don't care to go in,' she said to her sister. 'If you will allow me
to be driven home and send back the carriage for you, that's what I
shall like best.'

Selina stared and Laura knew what she would have said if she could have
spoken her thought. 'Oh, you are furious that I haven't given yo