ightly; "I've often thought," she added naively, "that I could like
you, Mrs. Fane, if you would only give me a chance."

"I'll try--you blessed innocent! You've torn me into rags and tatters,
and you did it adorably. What I said was idle, half-witted, gossiping
nonsense. So forget every atom of it as soon as you can, my dear, and
let me prove that I'm not an utter idiot, if _I_ can."

"That will be delightful," said Eileen with a demure smile; and Rosamund
laughed, too, with full-hearted laughter; for trouble sat very lightly
on her perfect shoulders in the noontide of her strength and youth. Sin
and repentance were rapid matters with Rosamund; cause, effect, and
remorse a quick sequence to be quickly reckoned up, checked off, and
cancelled; and the next blank page turned over to be ruled and filled
with the next impeachment.

There was, in her, more of mischief than of real malice; and if she did
pinch people to see them wiggle it was partly because she supposed that
the pain would be as momentary as the pinch; for nothing lasted with
her, not even the wiggle. So why should the pain produced by a furtive
tweak interfere with the amusement she experienced in the victim's jump?

But what had often saved her from a social lynching was her ability to
laugh at her own discomfiture, and her unfeigned liking and respect for
the turning worm.

* * * * *

"And, my dear," she said, concluding the account of the adventure to
Mrs. Ruthven that afternoon at Sherry's, "I've never been so roundly
abused and so soundly trounced in my life as I was this blessed morning
by that red-headed novice! Oh, my! Oh, la! I could have screamed with
laughter at my own undoing."

"It's what you deserved," said Alixe, intensely annoyed, although
Rosamund had not told her all that she had so kindly and gratuitously
denied concerning her relations with Selwyn. "It was sheer effrontery of
you, Rosamund, to put such notions into the head of a child and stir
her up into taking a fictitious interest in Philip Selwyn which I
know--which is perfectly plain to m--to anybody never existed!"

"Of course it existed!" retorted Rosamund, delighted now to worry Alixe.
"She didn't know it; that is all. It really was simple charity to wake
her up. It's a good match, too, and so obviously and naturally
inevitable that there's no harm in playing prophetess. . . . Anyway,
what do _we_ care, dear? Unless you--"

"Rosamund!" said