room with a panicky assumption of
indifference. The girl, though two years younger, was quite at ease in
expressing her sympathy, and conscious of how decoratively she did it.
(This was Frederica's analysis, anyhow. As is the wont of mothers, she
liked the boy better.)

"I think Miss Norris is waiting for you, my dear."

"_Oui, maman_," said Ellen dutifully.

She was supposed to talk French all the morning, but somehow this
particular observance of the regime irritated her mother a little and
she rather visibly waited while Ellen quite adequately made her
farewells to her uncle and gracefully left the room.

The tenseness of her attitude relaxed suddenly when the child was gone.
She reached out a cool soft hand and laid it on one of Rodney's that
rested limply on the table. There was rather a long silence--ten seconds
perhaps. Then:

"How did you find out about it?" Rodney asked.

They were both too well accustomed to these telepathic short-cuts to
take any note of this one. She'd seen that he knew, just with her first
glance at him there in the doorway; and something a little tenderer and
gentler than most of her caresses about this one, told him that she did.
What it was they knew, went of course without saying.

"Harriet's back," she said. "She got in day before yesterday. Constance
said something to her about it, thinking she knew. They've thought all
along that you and I knew, too. Harriet was quick enough and clever
enough to pretend she did and yet find out about it, all at the same
time. So that's so much to the good. That's better than having them find
out we didn't know. Of course Harriet came straight to me. I'm glad it
was Harriet Constance spoke to about it and not me. I'd probably have
given it away. But Harriet never batted an eye."

"No," said Rodney, "Harriet wouldn't."

It was a certain dryness in his intonation rather than the words
themselves Frederica answered.

"She'd do anything in the world for you, Roddy," she said, with a
vaguely troubled intensity.

This time his mind didn't follow hers. For an instant he misunderstood
her pronoun, then he saw what she meant.

"Harriet?--Oh, yes, Harriet's all right," he said absently.

She left his preoccupation alone for a minute or two, but at last broke
in on it with a question. "How did you find out about it, Roddy? Who
told you?"

"No one," he said in a voice unnaturally level and dry. "I went to see
the show on the recommendation of a