owever, that she told me only about ten days ago,
she didn't like him? Yet I am forgetting. We have it on good authority
that "'tis best to begin with a little aversion."

I ought to have known that a daughter of Ellaline de Nesville and
Frederic Lethbridge couldn't develop into the star-high being this girl
has seemed to me; and I must make the best of it that she's something
less in soul than, in my first burst of astonished admiration, I was
inclined to appraise her. After all, why feel bitter against people
because they have disappointing shortcomings, if not defects, instead of
the dazzling virtues that glittered in your imagination? Cream always
rises to the top, yet we don't think less of it because there's nothing
but milk underneath.

Yes, if I find out that she likes this hypnotic cuckoo I mustn't despise
her for it. But I must find out as soon as I can. Suspense is the one
unbearable pain. And you are at liberty to laugh at me as I hope I shall
soon be laughing at myself.

L. P.

XV

AUDRIE BRENDON TO HER MOTHER

_Osborne Hotel, Torquay_,
_August 6th_

Ma Petite Minerve-de-Mere: A hundred and six and a half thanks
for your counsels and consolations. I needed both, and not a bit the
less because I'm not unhappy now. I'm violently happy. It won't last,
but I love it--this happiness. I keep it sitting on my shoulder and
stroking its wings, so it mayn't remember when it's time to fly away.

That letter I wrote you _was_ silly. I was a regular cry-baby to write
it. But I'm so glad you answered quickly. I don't know how I should have
borne it if the man at the Poste Restante window had said: "Nothing for
you, miss." I might have responded with blows.

There was a letter from Ellaline, too. I'd sent her the "itinerary" as
far as I knew it, and Torquay was the last place on the list. I was
wondering if anything were the matter, but there isn't--though there
_is_ news. She waited to write, she says, so that her plans might be
decided and she could tell them to me.

The military manoeuvres go on; and the news has nothing directly to do
with the adored Honore. But Ellaline has made a confidante--a Scotch
girl she has met. I don't mean she's told everything; far from that,
apparently. She has kept the fraudulent part, about me, secret, and only
confided the romantic part, about herself. What she says she has told
is, that she's run away from cruel persons who want to have all her
money, and to preve