ence as she possessed over
him, to keep his mind well aired and cool amid the slightly overheating
breezes of that memorable midsummer.

Cleopatra, on the other hand, not so wise perhaps as Vanessa, certainly
not so ready to retire as Agatha, and possibly less able to feel if not
to simulate indifference, than either of them, plunged into the conflict
with a vigour and a degree of animation which made her almost as
unbearable to the other girls as Leonetta herself. Again, however,
Vanessa was shrewd enough to realise the emergency Cleopatra was in, and
forgave her much that left Agatha painfully wondering. For Cleopatra the
fight was a serious one. It called for all her resources and all her
skill. Unfortunately she lacked Leonetta's fertility in finding means by
which to draw the general attention upon herself, and being overanxious
as well, her tactics frequently failed. She would descend to every shift
to thwart her sister's wiles,--only to find, however, that it was more
often Stephen Fearwell or the Incandescent Gerald, than Guy and Denis,
who allowed themselves to be diverted from their orbit round Leonetta,
to attend to her.

At tennis it would be a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at
croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it
would be a peculiar pebble,--anywhere, everywhere, there was always
something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still,
until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself,
had run all agog to her side.

Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat,
when they are combated consciously, is literally exhausting. In two or
three days Cleopatra was exhausted.

Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too
jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention
of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again,
every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories
over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a
week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no
longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the role of queen of the
party.

Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked
brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of
Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had
thus held up the game for a mom