go."

He didn't move.

"If you don't, I'll scream at the top of my lungs," I said. And he must
have seen that I meant it, for he flung open the door with a slam and I
swept past him, with my nose in the air, trying to look like Mother.

[Illustration: "_I swept past him with my nose in the air, trying to
look like Mother_"]

I didn't see him again till it was time to go home. Then he drove back
with Mrs. Ess Kay and me to The Moorings in the shut-up motor car, and
didn't open his mouth once on the way--which was wonderful for him, and
seemed somehow ominous.

I had been too angry and excited after that scene of ours to feel
unhappy, or to worry much about what might come next, but that drive,
short as it was, with Potter freezingly silent, and Mrs. Ess Kay
alarmingly polite, made me feel that the end had come. I was sure she
had been told by her brother what an obstinate, ungrateful girl I was,
and I had a guilty sinking of the heart, as if I really had been both.
There was no Sally to protect me now, no one to advise me what to do,
and there was a big lump in my throat as I said good night and went to
my own room.

I hadn't been there long when there came a knock at the door--the same
determined kind of inexorable knock which Mother gives when I've been
found out in something which she thinks it her duty to make me sorry
for.

I'd locked the door, and would have liked to make some excuse not to
open it; but it was Mrs. Ess Kay's door, and Mrs. Ess Kay's room, just
as much as it was Mrs. Ess Kay's brother I had refused.

She sailed in all in black, like an executioner, though of course,
executioners don't go down into history wearing chiffon trimmed with
jet.

"My dear Betty," said she, subsiding into a large armchair, "I want to
have a serious talk with you."

It would have been stupid pretending not to understand, so I just
looked at her, and waited.

"I daresay, you can guess what it's about?" she went on.

"I suppose so," I said. "I'm very sorry about everything. But I can't
help not being in love with Mr. Parker, can I?"

"I should have thought," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "that your Mother's
daughter would have attached very little importance to being in love.
Apparently she hasn't been as successful with you as with Lady
Victoria. Believe me, Betty, there's nothing in it--nothing at all."

"In what?"

"In what you call 'being in love.' A girl fancies a man for his eyes,
or his dancing, or because he