into Mavis's pleading, yet defiant face.

"It was all my fault: you're hurting her and she's such a dear,"
continued Mavis.

"Better let her stay," said Devitt, while Mrs Devitt, seeing the girl's
flushed face, recalled the passage in Miss Mee's letter which referred
to Mavis's sudden anger.

Mrs Devitt hated a display of emotion; she put down Mavis's
interference with Lowther's design to bad form. She was surprised that
Lowther and her husband were so assiduous in their attentions to Mavis;
indeed, as Mrs Devitt afterwards remarked to Miss Spraggs:

"They hardly ever took their eyes off her face."

"Never trust a man further than you can see him," had remarked the
agreeable rattle, who had never had reason to complain of want of
respect on the part of any man with whom she may have been temporarily
isolated.

"And did you notice how her eyes flashed when she seized Jill from
Lowther? They're usually a sort of yellow. Then, as perhaps you saw,
they seemed to burst into a fierce glare."

"My dear Hilda, is there anything I don't notice?" Miss Spraggs had
replied, a remark which was untrue in its present application, as, at
the moment when Mavis had taken Jill's part, Eva Spraggs had been
looking out of the window, as she wondered if the peas, that were to
accompany a roast duckling at luncheon, would be as hard and as
unappetising as they had been when served two days previously.

This was later in the day. Just now, Mavis was about to be taken down
to luncheon by Montague Devitt; she wondered if her defence of dear
Jill had prejudiced her chance of an engagement.

"What's that picture covered with a shutter for?" asked Mavis, as her
eye fell on the padlocked "Etty."

"Oh, well-it's an 'Etty': some people might think it's scarcely the
thing for some young people, you know," replied Devitt, as they
descended the stairs.

"Really! Is that why it's kept like that?" asked Mavis, who could
scarcely conceal her amusement.

Mrs Devitt, who was immediately behind, had detected the note of
merriment in Mavis's voice. "Scarcely a pure-minded girl," she said to
herself, unconscious of the fact that there is nothing so improper as
the thoughts implied by propriety.

It was not a very pleasant time for Mavis. Although the luncheon was a
good meal, and served in a manner to which she had been unaccustomed
for many years, she did not feel at home with the Devitts. Montague,
the head of the house, she disliked least; no