roux had
obtained so strong an influence over the girl that she seemed to have
grafted not only her mind, but her heart, her apparatus of emotions and
of affections, on to Lady Betty's. What the former silently thought,
the latter silently thought too, and when the silence died in
expression, they frequently spoke almost the same sentence
simultaneously. Sometimes Mdlle. Leroux would express some feeling with
vehemence to Bellairs when Lady Betty was out of hearing, and an hour or
two afterwards, with only a slightly fainter vehemence, Lady Betty would
express the same feeling. Indeed, these two women seemed to have only
one heart, one soul, between them, the heart and soul that had
originally been the sole property of the elder one.

"You are very generous," said Bellairs one day to Mdlle. Leroux.

"Why?" she asked in surprise.

"You give away things that most of us have only the power to keep."

"What do you mean?"

"Some day, perhaps, I will tell you."

Clarice Leroux was tremendously impulsive, and she had taken an
immediate and strong liking to Bellairs. In this Lady Betty, as usual,
coincided. But when Clarice's liking passed through self-revelations,
confidences, towards a stronger feeling, it was rather strange to find
Lady Betty still treading in her footsteps, still ever succeeding her in
her attitudes of mind and of heart. Yet the inevitable double
flirtation, apparently expected and desired by the two women, was
strangely gilded by novelty; and, at first, Bellairs played as happily
with these two dual natures as a child plays with two doll
representatives of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. For, at first, he
possessed the child's power of detachment, and felt that he could at any
moment discard dolls for soldiers, or a Noah's Ark, and still keep
happiness in his lap. But most things have an inherent tendency to
become complicated if they are let alone and allowed to develop free
from definite guidance, and presently Bellairs became conscious of
advancing complications. His intellectual appreciation of a new
situation began to degenerate into a more emotional condition, which
disturbed and irritated him. It seemed that he was peering through the
bars of the gate that guards the garden of passion. Which of the two
women did he see in the garden?

He told himself that, having regard to the circumstances of the case, he
ought to see both of them. Unfortunately, a vision of that kind never
has been, and never