th a petulant gesture.

"Yes, go at once or you won't overtake her. I am tired, really wretchedly
tired--and am best left alone."

CHAPTER III

WHICH CONCERNS ITSELF, INCIDENTALLY, WITH THE GRIEF OF A VICTIM OF
CIRCUMSTANCE AND THE RECEPTION OF A BELATED CHRISTMAS GREETING

Henrietta Frayling left the Grand Hotel, that afternoon, in a chastened
frame of mind. Misgivings oppressed her. She doubted--and even more than
doubted--whether she had risen to the full height of her own reputation,
whether she had not allowed opportunity to elude her, whether she had not
lost ground difficult to regain. The affair was so astonishingly sprung
upon her. The initial impact she withstood unbroken--and from this she
derived a measure of consolation. But afterwards she weakened. She had
felt too much--and that proved her undoing. It is foolish, because
disabling, to feel.

Her treatment of Damaris she condemned as mistaken, admitting a point of
temper. It is hard to forgive the younger generation their youth, the
infinite attraction of their ingenuous freshness, the fact that they have
the ball at their feet. Hence she avoided the society of the young of her
own sex--as a rule. Girls are trying when pretty and intelligent, hardly
less trying--though for other reasons--when the reverse. Boys she
tolerated. In the eyes of young men she sunned herself taking her ease,
since these are slow to criticize, swift to believe--between eighteen and
eight-and-twenty, that is.--We speak of the mid-Victorian era and then
obtaining masculine strain.

Misgivings continued to pursue her during the ensuing evening and even
interfered with her slumbers during the night. This--most unusual
occurrence--rendered her fretful. She reproached her tractable and
distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too
far. In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently
she might assert the need of active exertion. She pointed out the fallacy
of rushing to extremes; which rather cruelly floored him, since
"rushing," in any shape or form, had conspicuously passed out of his
programme some considerable time ago.

"My wife is not at all herself," he told Marshall Wace, at breakfast next
morning--"quite overdone, I am sorry to say, and upset. I blame myself.
I must keep a tight hand on her and forbid over exertion."

With a small spoon, savagely, daringly he beat in the top of his
boiled egg.

"I must be more watchful