lunch at home, and to
visit her friends when they were not expecting her, in the afternoon.
_It could make no difference to them_, she had told Magdalen, who shook
her head over that well-known phrase, which Colonel Bellairs had long
since established as "a household word." Bessie was not to be moved by
Magdalen's disapproval, however. She retired to her chamber, donned a
certain enamel brooch which she only wore on Sundays, and appeared at
luncheon.

It was not a particularly cheerful meal. Wentworth was silent and
depressed. Colonel Bellairs did not for an instant cease to speak about
the right of way during the whole of luncheon, even when his back was
turned while he was bending over a ham on the sideboard. And the moment
luncheon was over he had marched Wentworth off to the scene of the
dispute.

Magdalen was vaguely uneasy at the tiny incident of Bessie's change of
plan, and was glad it had escaped Fay's notice. Most things about Bessie
did escape Fay's notice except her clothes. Bessie was not at eighteen
an ingratiating person. No one had ever called her the sunbeam of the
home. She had preserved throughout her solemn childhood and flinty
youth a sort of resentful protest against the attitude of her family at
her advent, namely, that she was not wanted. Her mother had died at her
birth, and for several years afterwards her father had studiously
ignored her presence in the house, not without a sense of melancholy
satisfaction at this proof of his devotion to her mother.

"No, no. It may be unreasonable. It may be foolish," he was wont to say
to friends who had not accused him of unreasonableness, "but don't ask
me to be fond of that child. I can't look at her without remembering
what her birth cost me."

Bessie was a fine, strong young woman, with a perfectly impassive
handsome face--no Bellairs could achieve plainness--and the manner of
one who moves among fellow creatures who do not come up to the standard
of conduct which she has selected as the lowest permissible to herself
and others. Bessie had not so far evinced a preference for anyone in her
own family circle, or outside it. Her affections consisted so far of a
distinct dislike of and contempt for her father. She had accorded to Fay
a solemn compassion when first the latter returned to Priesthope.
Indeed, the estrangement between the sisters, brought about by the
suggested course of reading, had been the unfortunate result of a
cogitating pity on Bes