t could be said to be directed to anyone,
she sat down facing the conservatory and watched him, unable to decide
in how far he was identical with the man who had first met Flavia
Malcolm in her mother's house, twelve years ago. Did he at all remember
having known her as a little girl, and why did his indifference hurt her
so, after all these years? Had some remnant of her childish affection
for him gone on living, somewhere down in the sealed caves of her
consciousness, and had she really expected to find it possible to be
fond of him again? Suddenly she saw a light in the man's sleepy eyes,
an unmistakable expression of interest and pleasure that fairly startled
her. She turned quickly in the direction of his glance, and saw Flavia,
just entering, dressed for dinner and lit by the effulgence of her most
radiant manner. Most people considered Flavia handsome, and there was
no gainsaying that she carried her five-and-thirty years splendidly. Her
figure had never grown matronly, and her face was of the sort that does
not show wear. Its blond tints were as fresh and enduring as enamel--and
quite as hard. Its usual expression was one of tense, often strained,
animation, which compressed her lips nervously. A perfect scream of
animation, Miss Broadwood had called it, created and maintained by
sheer, indomitable force of will. Flavia's appearance on any scene
whatever made a ripple, caused a certain agitation and recognition, and,
among impressionable people, a certain uneasiness, For all her sparkling
assurance of manner, Flavia was certainly always ill at ease and, even
more certainly, anxious. She seemed not convinced of the established
order of material things, seemed always trying to conceal her feeling
that walls might crumble, chasms open, or the fabric of her life fly
to the winds in irretrievable entanglement. At least this was the
impression Imogen got from that note in Flavia which was so manifestly
false.

Hamilton's keen, quick, satisfied glance at his wife had recalled to
Imogen all her inventory of speculations about them. She looked at him
with compassionate surprise. As a child she had never permitted herself
to believe that Hamilton cared at all for the woman who had taken him
away from her; and since she had begun to think about them again, it
had never occurred to her that anyone could become attached to Flavia in
that deeply personal and exclusive sense. It seemed quite as irrational
as trying to possess