one moon had
been enough to see the waxing and waning of what Mr. Constantine had
surprisingly called her passion.

Yet Miss Le Pettit, eager, nay, even anxious, as she had been to
lead the gentleman away from the topic, reverted to it as though by
a curious fascination, when he had taken his leave. To tell the truth,
her conscience had some slight cause to make her uneasy on this very
subject of the violent Loveday. The thing was ridiculous, of course ...
she, Miss Le Pettit, could not conceivably have been even remotely to
blame for such a fantastical happening, and yet that slight pricking
remained....

"An odd word to have used," she commented, in recounting the
conversation she had had with Mr. Constantine to her eager friends, "a
very odd word, indeed, for by it, apparently, he did not mean an access
of anger such as the word signifies in all the books I have read...."

"You mean in the books that you are _supposed_ to have read,
Flora," interrupted one of the young ladies, a flighty girl, whose
tongue often outran her discretion. "I have come across it meaning
something quite different in books like--well, you know the sort of
books I mean."

"I do not think, though, that even _that_ was how Mr. Constantine
used the word," replied Flora, with more of discernment than she
commonly showed, "though I will not pretend to you, Ellen, that I do not
recognise the sense in which you refer to it. To be candid, I don't
think I know what he did mean, but he seemed to me to be paying a vast
deal of attention to the matter, which surprised me in a person of his
standing."

"I have heard he is a man of much sensibility, though he is so
satirical," murmured the romantic Emilia, bending over her netting so
that her ebon curls shaded her suddenly flushing cheek.

"Perhaps he knows more about the fair Loveday than we have guessed,"
cried the careless Ellen; "perhaps he knows _too_ much, and cannot
keep away from the subject for his guilty conscience, as they say
murderers are drawn back to the spot where they have buried the body of
their victim!"

But this was too gross a departure from delicacy of thought and phrase,
and Miss Le Pettit, the prick stirring, perchance, signified as much by
the cold manner in which she brought back the conversation to the more
correct and really more enthralling subject of the Alexandra jacket.

It was generally agreed that Miss Belben, of Bugletown, could not go far
wrong with the sleev