is putting on her best
dress_--_she had on a flannel blouse, and she ran to change it because
you were here_! One would need to be nineteen once more to realise the
shame, the horror, the distress with which poor Rowena recalled those
thoughtless words! She pressed her hands against her cheeks, and gave a
little groan of distress. It was characteristic of her that the one
thing she now asked was that no one else should know of her humiliation;
her mother might remonstrate, and Dreda declaim to her heart's content,
but nothing on earth should induce her to disclose the real reason of
her refusal. As for Maud, having done the mischief, she might be
trusted to keep quiet for her own sake; and even with her, Rowena would
have kept silence if she had been allowed. Beyond an added touch of
dignity, there was no change in her manner towards her younger sister,
but, strange to say, the culprit was by no means satisfied to escape so
easily. Maud suffered from an insatiable desire to be observed, and--so
to speak--live in the public eye. If she could be observed with
admiration, so much the better, but given a choice between being
disgraced or ignored, she would not have hesitated for the fraction of a
moment. Better a hundred times to be scolded and denounced than to be
passed by in silence as if one were a stick or a stone. So it happened
that when Rowena treated her with stately indifference, Maud found it
impossible to keep silent.

"You might as well say it out!" she declared, wriggling about in her
seat, and pouting her lips with an air of offence. "I hate people who
bottle things up when all the time you see them fizzling inside. I
suppose you're furious with me about what I said."

Rowena drooped her eyelids, and smiled a smile of haughty detachment.

"It is a matter of perfect indifference to me _what_ you say."

"It was quite true!"

"Perfectly true. I should be the last person in the world to accuse you
of imagination."

"You _were_ furious. You went white with rage, and he saw it as well as
me. Now, I suppose you'll tell mother, and stop me going to the chase."

"I should not dream of interfering with your plans. It is a matter of
perfect indifference to me whether you go or stay."

"But,"--Maud's eyes positively bulged with excitement--"I might say
something else. You never know."

"Possibly you might. What then? Do you really imagine, my dear Maud,
that anyone notices what _you_ say!"