ing here--after--perhaps--I
have just put a few things straight for you, and catalogued the
pots--without getting in her way, and infringing her rights!'

Elizabeth was sitting very erect and bright-eyed. It seemed to her
that some subliminal self for which she was hardly responsible had
suddenly got the better of a hair-splitting casuistical self, which
had lately been in command of her, and that the subliminal self had
spoken words of truth and soberness.

But instead of storming, the Squire laughed contemptuously.

'Pamela's rights? Well, I'll discuss them when she remembers her
duties! I remonstrated with her one morning when the servants were
all giving warning--and there was nothing to eat--and she had made a
hideous mess of some instructions of mine about a letter to the
County Council--and I pointed out to her that none of these things
would have happened if you had been here.'

'Oh, poor Pamela!' exclaimed Elizabeth--'but still more, poor me!'

'"Poor me"?' said the Squire. 'What does that mean?'

'You see, I have a weakness for being liked!' said Elizabeth after a
moment. 'And how can Pamela like anybody that is being thrown at her
head like that?' She looked at her companion reproachfully. But the
Squire was not to be put down.

'Besides,' he continued, without noticing her interruption, 'Pamela
writes to me this morning that she wants my consent to her training
as an Army nurse.'

'Oh no,' cried Elizabeth--'not yet. She is too young!'

Her face showed her distress. So she was really driving this poor
child, whom she would so easily have loved had it been allowed her,
out of her home! No doubt Pamela had seized on the pretext of her
'row' with her father to carry out her threat to Elizabeth of
'running away,' and before Elizabeth's return to Mannering, so that
neither the Squire nor any one else should guess at the real reason.
But how could Elizabeth acquiesce?

Yet if she revealed the story of Pamela's attack upon her to the
Squire, what would happen? Only a widening of the breach between him
and his daughter. Elizabeth, of course, might depart, but Pamela
would be none the more likely to return to face her father's wrath.
And again for the hundredth time Elizabeth said to herself, in
mingled pain and exasperation--'What _did_ she mean?--and what have
I ever done that she should behave so?'

Then she raised her eyes. Something impelled her--as it were a
strong telepathic influence. The Squire