upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.

Some persons very sensibly bring their mental atmosphere along with them.
You are compelled to breathe it whether you like or not. The atmosphere
Charles Verity brought with him, at this juncture, was too masculine,
intellectually too abstract yet too keenly critical, for comfortable
absorption by Henrietta's lungs. Her self-complacency shrivelled in it.
She felt but a mean and pitiful creature, especially in her recent
treatment of Damaris. It was a nasty moment, the more difficult to
surmount because of that wretchedly betraying squeak. Fury against
herself gingered her up to action. She must be the first to speak.

"Ah! how delightful to see you," she said, a little over-playing the
part--"though only for an instant. I was in the act of bidding Damaris
farewell. As it is I have scandalously outstayed my leave; but we had a
thousand and one things, hadn't we, to say to one another."

She smiled upon both father and daughter with graceful deprecation.

"_Au, revoir_, darling child--we must manage to meet somehow, just once
more before I take my family north"--

And still talking, new lavender dress, trinkets, faint fragrance and all,
she passed out on to the corridor accompanied by Sir Charles Verity.

CHAPTER XIII

WHICH RECOUNTS A TAKING OF SANCTUARY

Left alone Damaris sat down on the window-seat, within the shelter of the
wooden shutters which interposed a green barred coolness between her and
the brilliant world without. That those two, her father and Henrietta
Frayling, should thus step off together, the small, softly crisp,
feminine figure beside the tall, fine-drawn and--in a way--magnificent
masculine one, troubled her. Yet she made no attempt to accompany or to
follow them. Her head ached. Her mind and soul ached too. She felt spent
and giddy, as from chasing round and round in an ever-shifting circle
some tormenting, cleverly lovely thing which perpetually eluded her.
Which thing, finally, floated out of the door there, drawing a
personage unmeasurably its superior, away with it, and leaving
her--Damaris--deserted.

Leaving, moreover, every subject on which its nimble tongue had lighted,
damaged by that contact--at loose ends, frayed and ravelled, its inwove
pattern just slightly discoloured and defaced. The patterned fabric of
Damaris' thought and inner life had not been spared, but suffered
disfigurement along with the rest. She felt humiliated,