sound of voices from the drawing-room to her left. Mother! Profond!
From behind the verandah screen which fenced the ingle-nook she heard
these words!

"I don't, Annette."

Did Father know that he called her mother "Annette"? Always on the side
of her father--as children are ever on one side or the other in houses
where relations are a little strained--she stood, uncertain. Her mother
was speaking in her low, pleasing, slightly metallic voice--one word
she caught: "Demain." And Profond's answer: "All right." Fleur frowned.
A little sound came out into the stillness. Then Profond's voice: "I'm
takin' a small stroll."

Fleur darted through the window into the morning room. There he
came--from the drawing-room, crossing the verandah, down the lawn; and
the click of billiard-balls which, in listening for other sounds, she
had ceased to hear, began again. She shook herself, passed into the
hall, and opened the drawing-room door. Her mother was sitting on the
sofa between the windows, her knees crossed, her head resting on a
cushion, her lips half parted, her eyes half closed. She looked
extraordinarily handsome.

"Ah! Here you are, Fleur! Your father is beginning to fuss."

"Where is he?"

"In the picture-gallery. Go up!"

"What are you going to do to-morrow, Mother?"

"To-morrow? I go up to London with your aunt. Why?"

"I thought you might be. Will you get me a quite plain parasol?"

"What color?"

"Green. They're all going back, I suppose."

"Yes, all; you will console your father. Kiss me, then."

Fleur crossed the room, stooped, received a kiss on her forehead, and
went out past the impress of a form on the sofa-cushions in the other
corner. She ran up-stairs.

Fleur was by no means the old-fashioned daughter who demands the
regulation of her parents' lives in accordance with the standard
imposed on herself. She claimed to regulate her own life, not those of
others; besides, an unerring instinct for what was likely to advantage
her own case was already at work. In a disturbed domestic atmosphere
the heart she had set on Jon would have a better chance. None the less
was she offended, as a flower by a crisping wind. If that man had
really been kissing her mother it was--serious, and her father ought to
know.

"Demain!" "All right!" And her mother going up to Town! She turned in
to her bedroom and hung out of the window to cool her face, which had
suddenly grown very hot. Jon must be at the station by