usehold to appear
for breakfast--clear of eye and fresh of colour, with a countenance as
serene as her temper and a temper as normal as her appetite.

As for this last, she made an excellent breakfast, alone in the
sun-bright dining-room. And if at times, as she sat and munched, her
look was pensive and remote, this was due less to misgivings than to
mystification.

The quarrel and reconciliation with Mrs. Standish had cleared the
atmosphere of their relations; henceforward there could be no more
misunderstanding; they hated each other heartily; neither
entertained any illusion as to that; but their interests were too far
interdependent to license any play of private feeling. Sally wanted to
stay on at Gosnold House, and Mrs. Standish was resigned; Mrs.
Standish wanted her insurance money, and Sally would help her get
it--by keeping quiet. Sally might be dealt with severely by the law if
Mrs. Standish said the word, and Mrs. Standish, if Sally spoke, would
suffer not only in her pocketbook, but in the graces of her aunt.

But Sally was not without compunction in respect to the deception
practised on her still prospective employer. It wasn't possible to
know Mrs. Gosnold and not like her; if that personality enforced
respect, it was a lodestone for affection, and Sally meant with all
her heart to serve faithfully and well; if she was to have her way,
neither would know a single regret because of their association until
time and chance conspired to sunder it.

Then, too, sleep had appreciably changed the complexion of her mind
toward the Lyttleton episode. She was not yet able to recall that
chapter of infatuation without a cringe of shame; but that would pass
with time, and the experience had not been without a value already
apparent. For even as she had said to him, she was cured--and more
than cured, she was instructed; she was not only better
acquainted with herself, but had learned to read the Lyttleton
temperament too well ever to require repetition of the lesson. If she
had played the fatuous moth, she had come through cheaply, with wings
not even singed; for what she had taken for flame had proved to be no
more than cheapest incandescence. She felt so sure of all this that
she could even contemplate the affair with some inklings of the
amusement that it would yet afford her. And she was fixed to make this
the key of her attitude toward the man in all such future intercourse
as was unavoidable.

But Trego .