What can be the matter? Anyway, dear Duchess, _do_ come, and help
us through."

"What, indeed, can be the matter?" repeated Chloe lightly, as she handed
back the letter.

"Angela Warton never knows anything. But there's not much need for _you_
to ask, my dear," said the Duchess quietly.

Mrs. Fairmile turned an astonished face.

"Me?"

The Duchess, more bulky, shapeless and swathed than usual, subsided on a
chair, and just raised her small but sharp eyes on Mrs. Fairmile.

"What can you mean?" said Chloe, after a moment, in her gayest voice. "I
can't imagine. And I don't think I'll try."

She stooped and kissed the untidy lady in the chair. The Duchess bore it
again, but the lines of her mouth, with the strong droop at the corners,
became a trifle grim. Chloe looked at her, smiled, shook her head. The
Duchess shook hers, and then they both began to talk of an engagement
announced that morning in the _Times_.

* * * * *

Mrs. Fairmile was soon riding alone, without a groom--she was an
excellent horse-woman, and she never gave any unnecessary trouble to her
friends' servants--through country lanes chequered with pale sun. As for
the Duchess's attack upon her, Chloe smarted. The Duchess had clearly
pulled her up, and Chloe was not a person who took it well.

If Roger's American wife was by now wildly jealous of his old _fiancee_,
whose fault was it? Had not Mrs. Barnes herself thrown them perpetually
together? Dinners at Upcott!--invitations to Heston!--a resolute
frequenting of the same festal gatherings with Mrs. Fairmile. None of it
with Roger's goodwill, or his mother's,--Chloe admitted it. It had been
the wife's doing--all of it. There had been even--rare occurrences--two
or three balls in the neighbourhood. Roger hated dancing, but Daphne had
made him go to them all. Merely that she might display her eyes, her
diamonds, and her gowns? Not at all. The real psychology of it was
plain. "She wishes to keep us under observation--to give us
opportunities--and then torment her husband. Very well then!--_tu l'as
voulu, Madame!_"

As to the "opportunities," Chloe coolly confessed to herself that she
had made rather a scandalous use of them. The gossip of the
neighbourhood had been no doubt a good deal roused; and Daphne, it
seemed, was discontented. But is it not good for such people to be
discontented? The money and the arrogance of Roger's wife had provoked
Roger's former _