ene and urbane, could
have accurately explained what had taken place.

* * * * *

Lord Henry had been right. Cleopatra had given up. Jaded by the
unremitting exertions of a week's struggle for supremacy with her
sister, quite unable to face another week of similarly exhausting
effort, and unwilling to acknowledge herself defeated, illness had come
almost as a boon, almost as an angel of mercy. Something seemed to have
snapped inside her,--her main-spring it appeared to be; and now she
hugged her ailment, her weakness, or whatever it was, because it seemed
to offer her the chance of a graceful retreat before her ebbing forces
compelled her to surrender.

She did not come to breakfast now, and retired early. She half hoped,
perhaps, that the very air of fragility and pathetic languor, which she
had half consciously adopted, would draw even keener attention than had
her former attitude of robust equality with her sister. Vanity is full
of resources when it is wounded. But her attacks of sudden faintness she
could not control; they represented the only genuine feature of her
indisposition,--at least they, and the continued insomnia which was an
important symptom.

On the first evening of his visit, therefore, Lord Henry did not see
her, neither did she know as she tossed about in her bed at "The
Fastness" that he was anywhere within call. Instinctively she felt that
her mother's deep sympathy and anxiety to help were with her, but it
never occurred to her that the maternal devotion to her would ever
extend to extreme measures.

Meanwhile Lord Henry was quietly taking stock of everybody at Brineweald
Park. An hour in the drawing-room there, after his walk in the grounds,
supplied him with much useful information; and by the time the car
arrived to take the Delarayne household back to "The Fastness," he had
already formed certain very valuable conclusions.

It was clear to him that Denis Malster was head and shoulders above the
other men of the party, and but for a certain priggishness of manner
which, though offensive, was not altogether unamenable to correction, by
far the most attractive English male he had seen for some time. He had
almost forgotten their first encounter at the Inner Light meeting, and
was more favourably impressed than he had expected to be by the young
man who had quite evidently been the cause of Mrs. Delarayne's domestic
troubles.

Conversely, the impression Lor