rse made
to her order and conducted on much the same principle. Now it no longer
ran with oiled smoothness.

Her trip on the Pierce yacht had been much less restful than she had
anticipated. For this she blamed that sturdy knight of the law, Mr.
William Douglas. Mr. Douglas's offense was that he had inveigled her
into an engagement. (I am employing her own term descriptive of the
transaction.) It was a crime of brief duration and swift penalty. The
relation had endured just four weeks. Possibly its tenure of life might
have been longer had not the young-middle-aged lawyer accepted, quite
naturally, an invitation to join the cruise of the Pierce family and
_his fiancee_. The lawyer's super-respectful attitude toward his
principal client disgusted Esme. She called it servile.

For contrast she had the memory of another who had not been servile,
even to his dearest hope. There were more personal contrasts of memory,
too; subtler, more poignant, that flushed in her blood and made the
mere presence of her lover repellent to her. The status became
unbearable. Esme ended it. In plain English, she jilted the highly
eligible Mr. William Douglas. To herself she made the defense that he
was not what she had thought, that he had changed. This was unjust. He
had not changed in the least; he probably never would change from being
the private-secretary type of lawyer. Toward her, in his time of trial,
he behaved not ill. Justifiably, he protested against her decision.
Finding her immovable, he accepted the prevailing Worthingtonian theory
of Miss Elliot's royal prerogative as regards the male sex, and
returned, miserably enough, to his home and his practice.

Another difficulty had arisen to make distasteful the Pierce
hospitality. Kathleen Pierce, in a fit of depression foreign to her
usually blithe and easy-going nature, had become confidential and had
blurted out certain truths which threw a new and, to Esme, disconcerting
light upon the episode of the motor accident. In her first appeal to
Esme, it now appeared, the girl had been decidedly less than frank.
Therefore, in her own judgment of Hal and the "Clarion," Esme had been
decidedly less than just. In her resentment, Esme had almost quarreled
with her friend. Common honesty, she pointed out, required a statement
to Harrington Surtaine upon the point. Would Kathleen write such a
letter? No! Kathleen would not. In fact, Kathleen would be d-a-m-n-e-d,
darned, if she would. Very