erious sensation of content. She wished to
lie supine--except in her domestic affairs--and to dream that all was
well or would be well. It was as though she had determined that nothing
could extinguish or even disturb the mild flame of happiness which
burned placidly within her. And yet the anxieties of her existence were
certainly increasing again. On the morning after the opera, John had
departed on one of his sudden flying visits to London; these journeys,
formerly frequent, had been in abeyance for a time, and their resumption
seemed to point to some renewal of his difficulties. He had called at
Church Street on his way to Knype, and Carpenter had brought back word
that Miss Myatt was wonderfully better; but when Leonora herself called
at Church Street later in the morning and at last saw Aunt Hannah, she
was impressed by the change in the old creature, whose nervous system
had the appearance of being utterly disorganised. Then there was the
difficult case of Ethel and Fred Ryley, in which Leonora had done
nothing whatever; and there was the case of Rose, whose alienation from
the rest of the household became daily more marked. Finally there was
the new and portentous case of Millicent, probably the most
disconcerting of the three. Nevertheless, amid all these solicitudes,
Leonora remained equable, optimistic, and quietly joyous. Her state of
mind, so miraculously altered in a few hours, gave her no surprise. It
seemed natural; everything seemed natural; she ceased for a period to
waste emotion in the futile desire for her lost youth.

On the second day after the opera she was sitting at her Sheraton desk
in the small nondescript room which opened off the dining-room. In front
of her lay a large tablet with innumerable names of things printed on it
in three columns; opposite each name a little hole had been drilled, and
in many of the holes little sticks of wood stood upright. Leonora
uprooted a stick, exiling it to a long horizontal row of holes at the
top of the tablet, and then wrote in a pocket-book; she uprooted
another stick and wrote again, so continuing till only a few sticks were
left in the columns; these she spared. Then she rang the bell for the
parlourmaid and relinquished to her the tablet; the peculiar rite was
over.

'Is dinner ready?' she asked, looking at the small clock which she
usually carried about with her from room to room.

'Yes 'm.'

'Then ring the gong. And tell Carpenter I shall want