word forth with a little gasp.

For a moment Clodagh's face was suffused with red.

"I do not need anybody to tell me how I should care for Walter," she
said, after a moment's pause.

At the low, hurt tone, Nance's antagonistic attitude suddenly deserted
her. The expression of her face changed, her figure unbent.

"Clo! Clo! I was a wretch!--I was a wretch! Forgive me! It's only that,
knowing Walter is coming back to-morrow, knowing that he hates Lord
Deerehurst, and seeing you allow him to go everywhere that you go----
Oh, Clo, I can't properly explain, but sometimes I have felt--afraid.
Walter is so--so honourable himself."

Clodagh put out her hand and laid it for a moment upon her sister's.

"When one loves like I do, Nance," she said, "one simply doesn't _see_
anybody but the person that one cares for. Other people don't
count--other people don't exist!"

Nance looked down at the hand still resting upon her own.

"Perhaps not," she said wisely, "but the point is that the person one
cares for may not be quite so blind."

Clodagh withdrew her hand.

"You mean that Walter might imagine--you mean that Walter might be
_jealous_ of Lord Deerehurst?"

"I do mean that."

With a sudden gesture of amusement, Clodagh threw up her head and
laughed. Then almost as suddenly her face became grave.

"Nance!" she said in a new voice.

Very sharply Nance turned.

"Yes?"

But Clodagh's mood had veered once more.

"Nothing, darling!" she said--"nothing! Here we are at home! Aren't you
longing for a nice, cool room and a cup of tea?"

CHAPTER XIV

The fragmentary quarrel between the sisters was very suggestive.
Nance's anger, and Clodagh's irritable repudiation of her advice, had
each been fraught with its own significance. For, much as the former
might busy herself in the happiness of her own engagement and the
preparations for her marriage, she could not blind herself to the fact
that Clodagh was acting, if not with genuine folly, at least with
something that might readily be mistaken for it; and much as the latter
might resent a criticism of her action, she could not mentally deny
that possibly the criticism was justified.

Yet, when the matter came to be sifted, it was hard to say exactly the
point to which exception could reasonably be taken.

Undoubtedly Deerehurst did obtrude himself with curious--with almost
intimate--frequency into the plans of each day; but then the intrusion
was so natural