on with Miss Daphne Floyd had entirely relieved her of
them. For Roger now made her a handsome allowance and the chastened
habits of a most uncomfortable year had been hastily abandoned.

Nevertheless, Lady Barnes's aspect on this autumn afternoon was not
cheerful, and her companion was endeavouring, with a little kind
embarrassment, both to soothe an evident irritation and to avoid the
confidences that Roger's mother seemed eager to pour out. Elsie French,
whom Washington had known three years before as Elsie Maddison, was in
that bloom of young married life when all that was lovely in the girl
seems to be still lingering, while yet love and motherhood have wrought
once more their old transforming miracle on sense and spirit. In her
afternoon dress of dainty sprigged silk, with just a touch of austerity
in the broad muslin collar and cuffs--her curly brown hair simply parted
on her brow, and gathered classically on a shapely head--her mouth a
little troubled, her brow a little puckered over Lady Barnes's
discontents--she was a very gracious vision. Yet behind the gentleness,
as even Lady Barnes knew, there were qualities and characteristics of a
singular strength.

Lady Barnes indeed was complaining, and could not be stopped.

"You see, dear Mrs. French," she was saying, in a rapid, lowered voice,
and with many glances at the door, "the trouble is that Daphne is never
satisfied. She has some impossible ideal in her mind, and then
everything must be sacrificed to it. She began with going into ecstasies
over this dear old house, and now!--there's scarcely a thing in it she
does not want to change. Poor Edward and I spent thousands upon it, and
we really flattered ourselves that we had some taste; but it is not good
enough for Daphne!"

The speaker settled herself in her chair with a slight but emphatic
clatter of bangles and rustle of skirts.

"It's the ceilings, isn't it?" murmured Elsie French, glancing at the
heavy decoration, the stucco bosses and pendants above her head which
had replaced, some twenty years before, a piece of Adam design, sparing
and felicitous.

"It's everything!" Lady Barnes's tone was now more angry than fretful.
"I don't, of course, like to say it--but really Daphne's self-confidence
is too amazing!"

"She does know so much," said Elsie French reflectively. "Doesn't she?"

"Well, if you call it knowing. She can always get some tiresome person,
whom she calls an 'expert,' to back her up.