emed to have
wrought in her an answering suavity and gladness. There was almost a
latent gaiety in her glance, as, with her large, white, securely moving
hands, which seemed to express their potential genius in every deft and
delicate gesture, she took up and cut open and unfolded her letters,
pausing between them now and then to tweak off and eat a grape as large
as a plum from the bunch lying on its leaves in a Veronese-like silver
platter beside her.

This suavity, this gladness and even gaiety of demeanour were apparent
to Miss Eleanor Scrotton when she presently emerged from the house and
advanced slowly along the terrace, pausing at intervals beside its
balustrade to gaze with a somewhat melancholy eye over the prospect.

Miss Scrotton was struggling with a half formulated sense of grievance.
It was she who had brought Madame von Marwitz and the Aspreys together.
Madame von Marwitz already knew, of course, most of the people in
America who were worth knowing; if she hadn't met them there she had met
them in Europe; but the Aspreys she had, till then, never met, and they
had been, indisputably, Miss Scrotton's possession. Miss Scrotton had
known them slightly for several years; her father and Mr. Asprey had
corresponded on some sociological theme and the Aspreys had called on
him in London in a mood of proper deference and awe. She had written to
the Aspreys before sailing with Mercedes, had found that they were
wintering in Egypt, but would be back in America in Spring, ready to
receive Madame von Marwitz and herself with open arms; and within those
arms she had, a week ago, placed her treasure. No doubt someone else
would have done it if she hadn't; and perhaps she had been too eager in
her determination that no one else should do it. Perhaps she was
altogether a little too eager. Madame von Marwitz liked people to care
for her and showed a pretty gratitude for pains endured on her behalf;
at least she usually did so; but it may well have been that the great
woman, at once vaguely aloof and ironically observant, had become a
little irked, or bored, or merely amused at hearing so continually, as
it were, her good Scrotton panting beside her, tense, determined and
watchful of opportunity. However that may have been, Miss Scrotton, as
Madame von Marwitz's glance now lifted and rested upon herself, detected
the sharper gaiety defined by the French as "_malice_," lighting, though
ever so mildly, her friend's eyes and