point of forgetting every subject
of care or annoyance.

Estelle, too, she would have preferred to deceive. She did her best, and
for hours at a time appeared serene and merry. During these periods she
sometimes did actually lose the sense of anxious suspense; but it kept
itself alive as an undercurrent to her laughter.

When she saw how well Tom and Estelle got along together, she became
less timid about arranging little absences from them; she even--such a
common feminine mind had Aurora--saw in the congeniality which permitted
them to remain for half an hour in each other's company without boredom
the foundation of a dream, dim and distant, it is true--the dream of
seeing Estelle one day settled in a fine home of her own. She feared,
though, there might be bridges to cross before that event. She dreaded
the bridges. She wished Tom might be diverted from what she feared was
his purpose. How satisfactory, if Estelle might prove the diversion.
Estelle would really have suited Tom much better than the person of, she
feared, his actual choice.

Of all this she was somewhat disconnectedly thinking when she ran away
from them one evening after dinner, leaving him still at the table
smoking his cigar, while Estelle hunted up in a guide-book for his
benefit some little matter of altitudes. A flash of good sense showed
her the previousness of her calculations, and she mentally withdrew her
hand from meddling. Fate would take its own way, anyhow.

She had gone upstairs with the excuse of wanting a fan. Her fan had
easily been found, but instead of returning to her guests, "They won't
miss me if I do stay away for ten minutes," she said, and walked to the
end of the broad hallway, out through the door that stood open on to the
portico roof--once glassed over for a party and dedicated to Flirtation.

How long ago that seemed! Here Gerald, a quite new acquaintance, had
told her about Manlio and Brenda. Poor young things, so unhappy then,
and now exultant. Brenda was just back from America. The wedding was set
for the ninth of May. Only eight days more to wait.

As Aurora, leaning over the balustrade and letting her eyes rest on the
garden, thought of their assured and perfect happiness, she remembered a
gross fly in the ointment. She had been told that Brenda would have to
agree to bring up her children in the Catholic church. The thing had
seemed to Aurora appalling. Upon her dropping some hint of her sentiment
to the call