anoeuvres. But he was under no delusion regarding her. He
considered her quite the most selfish woman of his acquaintance, though
also one of the most superficially attractive. Hers was a cold, not a
hot selfishness, refined to a sort of exquisiteness and never for an
instant fleshly or gross. But that selfishness, in its singleness of
purpose, made her curiously powerful, curiously capable of influencing
persons of larger and finer spirit than herself--witness her ascendency
over Charles Verity during a long period of years, and that without ever
giving, or even seriously compromising, herself.

Into whoever she fixed her dainty little claws, she did it with an eye to
some personal advantage. And here Carteret owned himself puzzled--for
what advantage could she gain from this close association with Damaris?
The girl's freshness went, rather mercilessly, to show up her fading.

At times, it is true, watching her pretty alacrity of manner, hearing her
caressing speech, he inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt,
believe her self-forgetful, her affection genuine, guiltless of design or
after-thought. If so, so very much the better! He was far from grudging
her redemption, specially at the hands of Damaris.--Only were things, in
point of fact, working to this commendable issue? With the best will in
the world to think so, he failed to rid himself of some prickings of
anxiety and distrust.

And from such prickings he sensibly suffered to-night, as he leaned his
shoulder against the iron pillar of the verandah at the Hotel de la
Plage, and looked down into the _claire obscure_ of the moonlit gardens,
while over the polished floor of the big room at his back, the rhythmical
tread of the dancers' feet kept time to the music of piano and sweet
wailing strings.--For that a change showed increasingly evident in
Damaris he could not disguise from himself. In precisely what that change
consisted it was not easy to say. He discovered it more in an attitude of
mind and atmosphere than in outward action or even in words said. But she
was not quite the same as the grave and steadfast young creature who had
asked his help for her father, and indirectly for herself, in the moist
chill of the November twilight at The Hard--and who, receiving promise
of such help, had darted away over the drenched lawn in company with the
wildly gambolling cats alternately pursuing and pursued. Nor was she
quite the same as when he had walked with h