, Rosalind spent the afternoon with me yesterday, and
I felt suddenly that it wasn't for me to be stuck up about her--what am I
too but the pampered female idler, taking good things without earning
them? It made me shudder. Hence this fit of blues. The pampered, lazy,
brainless animal--it is such a terrific sight when in human form.
Rosalind talked about Nan, Pamela. In her horrible way--you know. Hinting
that she isn't alone in Rome, but with Stephen Lumley."

Pamela took off her glasses and polished them.

"Rosalind would, of course. What did you say?"

"I lost my temper. I let out at her. It's not a thing I often do with
Rosalind--it doesn't seem worth while. But this time I saw red. I told
her what I thought of her eternal gossip and scandal. I said, what if Nan
and Stephen Lumley, or Nan and anyone else, did arrange to be in Rome at
the same time and to see a lot of each other; where was the harm? No use.
You can't pin Rosalind down. She just shrugged her shoulders and smiled,
and said 'My dear, we all know our Nan. We all know too that Stephen
Lumley has been in love with her for a year, and doesn't live with his
wife. Then they go off to Rome at the same moment, and one hears that
they are seen everywhere together. Why shut one's eyes to obvious
deductions? You're so like an ostrich, Neville.' I said I'd rather be
an ostrich than a ferret, eternally digging into other people's
concerns,--and by the time we had got to that I thought it was far
enough, so I had an engagement with my dressmaker."

"It's no use tackling Rosalind," Pamela agreed. "She'll never change her
spots.... Do you suppose it's true about Nan?"

"I daresay it is. Yes, I'm afraid I do think it's quite likely
true.... Nan was so queer the few times I saw her after Gerda's accident.
I was unhappy about her. She was so hard, and so more than usually
cynical and unget-at-able. She told me it had been all her fault,
leading Gerda into mischief, doing circus tricks that the child tried to
emulate and couldn't. I couldn't read her, quite. Her tone about Gerda
had a queer edge to it. And she rather elaborately arranged, I thought,
so that she shouldn't meet Barry. Pamela, do you think she had finally
and absolutely turned Barry down before he took up so suddenly with
Gerda, or...."

Pamela said, "I know nothing. She told me nothing. But I rather thought,
when she came to see me just before she went down to Cornwall, that she
had made up her mind to