Uncle Bartie's daughter, or that Uncle Bartie looks as if he wasn't
Ronny's father?"

However suddenly and wantonly an idea struck Dorothy, she brought it out
as if it had been the result of long and mature consideration.

"Or is it," said Vera, "that I don't look as if I were Ronny's mother?"

Her eyes had opened all their length to take in Dorothy.

"No. I think it is that Uncle Bartie looks--"

Frances rushed in. "It doesn't matter, my dear, what you think."

"It will some day," said Dorothy.

It was perhaps the best thing she could have said, as showing that she
was more interested in the effect she would produce some day than in the
sensation she had created there and then.

"May I go round to Rosalind's after lessons?"

"You may."

"And may I stay to lunch if they ask me?"

"You may stay as long as they care to have you. Stay to tea, stay to
dinner, if you like."

Dorothy knew by the behaviour of her mother's face that she had scored
somewhere, somehow. She also knew that she was in disgrace and yet not
in disgrace; which, if you came to think of it, was a funny thing.

About this time Frances began to notice a symptom in herself. She was
apt to resent it when Vera discussed her children with her. One late
afternoon she and Anthony were alone with Vera. Captain Cameron had not
come round that day, and Bartie had gone into town to consult either his
solicitor or a specialist. He was always consulting one or the other.

"You're wrong, you two," said Vera. "You think Michael's tender and
Nicky's hard and unimpressionable. Michael's hard. You won't have to
bother about Michael's feelings."

"Michael's feelings," said Frances, "are probably what I shall have to
bother about more than anything."

"You needn't. For one thing, they'll be so unlike your feelings that you
won't know whether they're feelings at all. You won't even know whether
he's having them or not. Nicky's the one you'll have to look out for.
He'll go all the howlers."

"I don't think that Nicky'll be very susceptible. He hasn't shown any
great signs so far."

"Hasn't he! Nicky's susceptibility is something awful."

"My dear Vera, you say yourself you don't care about children and that
you don't understand them."

"No more I do," said Vera. "But I understand men."

"Do you understand Veronica?"

"Of course I don't. I said men. Veronica's a girl. Besides, I'm
Veronica's mother."

"Nicky," said Anthony, "is not much more than ni