Theo had not changed; that they had not quarrelled was quite evident,
for when she spoke to him there was something of the gentleness of the
day before in her manner; but this exception excepted, the girl had
reverted to her old air of silent, resentful indifference, and her
strange beauty was to the watchful old woman as repellent as she had
ever seen it.

Once, when Carron spoke to her, Brigit answered without turning her
head, and with her narrowed eyes and slow-moving lips looked almost
venomous.

If she had produced a knife and plunged it into him, the Duchess told
herself she would not have been surprised.

"An uncommonly unpleasant young person," thought the old lady, "with the
temper of a fiend. I wonder where she got it; poor Henry had no temper
at all, and her mother is at worst a spitfire."

Yelverton, too, noticed the disquieting change that had come over Lady
Brigit, and observed with some amusement that she had noticed his
observation and did not care about it, one way or the other.

Theo, seeing his love with the rosiest of spectacles, asked her gently
what was the matter, and was told in a quiet voice that she was cross.
"I have an abominable temper, poor boy," she said.

And possibly because it was the simple truth, it never occurred to him
to believe her, and he set this remark down as an example of her divine
humility.

Her mother, glaring at her toward the end of dinner, shrugged her
shoulders.

"Cross again," she thought; "what an infernal temper she has. I'm glad I
haven't, it makes so many wrinkles."

But Brigit had some reason for looking tragic, for she had made up her
mind, while dressing, to break her engagement. Perhaps, after all,
Joyselle would prove large-minded enough to continue to see Tommy, and
even if he did not, she must end matters.

Regarding herself, the girl had a curious prescience, and the vague
foreboding she had felt ever since her realisation of her love for
Joyselle had, as she sat before her glass while her maid dressed her
hair, suddenly developed into a definite terror. She knew that something
dreadful would happen if she continued to see Joyselle, and the fact
that he was quite innocent, and unsuspecting of the threatened danger,
gave her the sensation of one who sees a child playing with a poisonous
snake. _He_ was in danger as well as she, and not only they two, but his
son and his wife. Her beauty was so great, and she was so accustomed to
see its effe