riven on by a secret wrath, showed herself rather noisier than
Englishwomen generally are. She was a little impertinent, the Duchess
thought, decidedly aggressive, and not witty enough to carry it off.

Meanwhile, Daphne had instantly perceived that Mrs. Fairmile and Roger
had disappeared into the conservatory; and though she talked incessantly
through their absence, she felt each minute of it. When they came back
for tea, she imagined that Roger looked embarrassed, while Mrs. Fairmile
was all gaiety, chatting to her companion, her face raised to his, in
the manner of one joyously renewing an old intimacy. As they slowly
advanced up the long room, Daphne felt it almost intolerable to watch
them, and her pulses began to race. _Why_ had she never been told of
this thing? That was what rankled; and the Southern wildness in her
blood sent visions of the past and terrors of the future hurrying
through her brain, even while she went on talking fast and recklessly to
the Duchess.

* * * * *

At tea-time conversation turned on the various beautiful things which
the room contained--its Nattiers, its Gobelins, its two _dessus de
portes_ by Boucher, and its two cabinets, of which one had belonged to
Beaumarchais and the other to the _Appartement du Dauphin_ at
Versailles.

Daphne restrained herself for a time, asked questions, and affected no
special knowledge. Then, at a pause, she lifted a careless hand,
inquiring whether "the Fragonard sketch" opposite were not the pendant
of one--she named it--at Berlin.

"Ah-h-h!" said Mrs. Fairmile, with a smiling shake of the head, "how
clever of you! But that's not a Fragonard. I wish it were. It's an
unknown. Dr. Lelius has given him a name."

And she and Lelius fell into a discussion of the drawing, that soon left
Daphne behind. Native taste of the finest, mingled with the training of
a lifetime, the intimate knowledge of collections of one who had lived
among them from her childhood--these things had long since given Chloe
Fairmile a kind of European reputation. Daphne stumbled after her,
consumed with angry envy, the _precieuse_ in her resenting the easy
mastery of Mrs. Fairmile, and the wife in her offended by the strange
beauty, the soft audacities of a woman who had once, it seemed, held
Roger captive, and would, of course, like to hold him captive again.

She burned in some way to assert herself, the imperious will chafing at
the slender barri