m a hundred
different signs that her relationship to her younger daughter had been
materially improved by what had occurred.

Later on in the drawing-room, before the men arrived, however, Leonetta
seemed to suffer a relapse into her former mood of excessive sobriety,
and it was then that Miss Mallowcoid beckoned her niece to her.

"I think you were unnecessarily cross with me at dinner," Mrs. Delarayne
overheard her sister saying.

Leonetta pouted, and with an air of utter indifference turned to
Cleopatra.

"I think Guy Tyrrell rather tame, don't you? It was most awful uphill
work talking to him all through dinner."

Cleopatra held up a finger admonishingly. "You seemed to be talking
animatedly enough," she said.

"Yes," Leonetta began, "all about photography, walking tours, and things
that don't matter--" Then she felt Miss Mallowcoid's huge cold hand on
her arm.

"Leonetta dear, I said something to you a moment ago," lisped the
elderly spinster. And again Mrs. Delarayne looked up to try to catch her
daughter's reply.

"I'm sorry, Aunt Bella," said the girl, "but really one does not usually
expect to be congratulated on a slip of the tongue, and your--" she
burst out laughing.

Mrs. Delarayne thereupon resumed her conversation with Agatha Fearwell,
as she was now satisfied that Leonetta was both thoroughly recovered and
satisfactorily reformed.

"But I did not congratulate you, I--" her aunt persisted.

"Oh, well," Leonetta interrupted, "it really isn't worth discussing."

In any case it was not discussed, for at this juncture the men appeared.

They distributed themselves anything but haphazardly; Sir Joseph, for
instance, seating himself by the side of his hostess; Denis Malster
between Leonetta and her sister, and Guy and Stephen, as their
diffidence suggested, as remotely as possible from the younger women of
the party.

"Now, Leonetta," Sir Joseph began, "tell us something about your school
life. You are the only one amongst us who has just come from a strange
world."

Leonetta laughed. "Yes, a very strange world," she exclaimed.

Sir Joseph laughed too at what he conceived to be a most whimsical
suggestion.

"And did you 'ave nice teachers?" he pursued.

"Miss Tomlinson, the history mistress was my favourite," replied the
girl.

Denis remarked that he did not know they taught history at a school of
Domesticity.

"Yes, you see," Leonetta replied, "the history of the subject. Cookery
s