t she was a beautiful young woman. Leonetta
realised that this meant power, and at last she gauged to the smallest
fraction the extent of that power.

Then followed a mighty tussle in Cleopatra's heart. The influence the
elder daughter had always exercised over the mother's mind now presented
itself as a temptation, as a weapon she might use in a threatened
struggle. But it must not be supposed that this temptation was yielded
to without a furious conflict.

Leonetta did not know French well. French would give the stamp of finish
to an education which, in the case of the younger daughter, with her
constitutional disinclination for study, was little more than
make-believe. Ought not Baby to be sent abroad? Was it not doing her the
greatest service to speed her thither? Crudely Cleopatra concluded that
she was really acting altruistically in warmly advocating this
scheme--self-analysis is frequently as inaccurate as this;--besides,
would not she, Cleopatra, in the interval become engaged, married, and
an independent person outside her mother's home, and away from
Leonetta's "pitch"? The programme was surely all in favour of the
younger girl.

The plan was laid before Mrs. Delarayne, calmly, solemnly, with all the
elaborate minutiae of earnest concern about a sister's welfare that
Cleopatra could summon. And the result was that within six weeks of that
terrible Easter, arrangements had been made for Leonetta to spend at
least a year in a large and expensive school at Versailles, where she
could not only acquire the vernacular, but also become infected with the
polish of the native.

Sublimely unsuspecting, Leonetta had embraced her sister passionately on
the platform of Charing Cross station, and Cleopatra had even shed a
tear of pious sorrow.

Her mother had pointed out to Cleopatra at the time that she herself had
enjoyed none of the advantages which she urged with so much generous
fervour on behalf of her sister. Cleopatra had replied that she had had
other advantages, a University education, a classical training, the kind
of cultivation for which Leonetta was unsuited and in the acquisition of
which she would have been unhappy.

But worse was to come. At the end of the year Leonetta had returned;
and, if it is possible to imagine the superlative surpassed, certainly
Leonetta's appearance on her return, her increased vivacity, her perfect
command of French, her new tricks with her hair and clothes, utterly
eclip