ll we get
back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you
have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"--how
long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say,
if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in
universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.

Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from
her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though
she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.
Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed
on Val's subordinate position. She treated him like a superior
servant. When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as
green as a cat's. "How kind of Captain Hyde!" she drawled, as
Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel
was called indoors by Fanny to listen to a tale of distress,
unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia. "Some one ought
to warn the child."

"Warn her of what?"

"Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and
Lawrence a good looking man?"

"But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the
first handsome man she meets!" Yvonne looked as though she found
her sister rather hopeless. "Dear, you really must be sensible!"
Laura pleaded. "It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt
with her. He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I
suggested it!" This was the impression left on Laura's memory.
"She isn't the sort of woman to attract him."

"What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?" said Mrs. Jack,
blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.

"Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more
sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence
immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who
expect their wives to do them credit."

"Some one more like me," suggested Yvonne. "Or you." Her face was
a study in untroubled innocence. Laura eyed her rather sharply.
"But Lawrence isn't a marrying man. He won't marry till some
woman raises the price on him."

"You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel."

"So It is." Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.
"Sex is a duel. Don't you know"--an infinitesimal hesitation
marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she
was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's
married life alone:--"that--that's wha