t it might have been in
the case of a beloved son, that the widow far from being happy, was
conscious only of being urged by painful duty upon the errand she was
now fulfilling.

The presence of Leonetta in the car, though an insoluble mystery to the
child herself, was accounted for simply as an obvious manoeuvre on the
part of an angry and ingenious woman of the world, to retaliate to some
extent upon the chief cause of all her trouble, the annoyance and
disturbance he had occasioned her. But she was too sensible to upbraid
the girl herself. She knew how fatally decisive opposition might prove
at this stage in Leonetta's sudden excitement over Denis Malster, and
she resolved to be guided in the whole of the complicated business by
the sure hand of Lord Henry.

To Leonetta's secretly guilty heart, however, her mother's silence
seemed to remove the one possible explanation that yet remained for her
having been made to drive to Ashbury; and by the time three quarters of
the journey had been accomplished, she resigned herself to a mood of
mystified boredom.

Occasionally her mother would mutter anxiously: "I wonder whether Lord
Henry will be in";--but that was all. Her affability and good nature
seemed to be the same as usual.

At last the car drew up at the northern outskirts of Ashbury, before a
building that appeared to Leonetta as unlike her mental image of a
sanatorium as anything could possibly be. It was a large building with a
white stucco front, badly cracked all over,--evidently a sort of old
manor house of about the period of George IV,--and the sight of the
smart motor cars drawn up on either side of the road in front of its
partly dilapidated gate, seemed but to enhance the general impression of
decay which characterised both the house and its surroundings.

The string of cars, however, brought a smile to Mrs. Delarayne's lips,
for they showed that Lord Henry's clinique was open that day.

"Now wait for me here, in the car," she said in her most positive
manner, "however long I am."

Leonetta and Cleopatra knew from experience that when their mother spoke
in this way she would brook no disobedience; and so throwing off her
dust cloak, Leonetta settled herself in the car to see what interest she
could derive from watching the activity at the gate.

Mrs. Delarayne's card sufficed to bring the matron hurrying down with
the assurance that Lord Henry would see her next. He was very busy, and
had been hard