the matter, any
responsibility of thought; she did indeed much better by saying after a
moment: "You ARE devoted!"

"Miss Merriman has her afternoon--I can't imagine what they do with
their afternoons," the Duchess went on. "But she's to be back in the
school-room at seven."

"And you have Aggie till then?"

"Till then," said the Duchess cheerfully. "You're off for Easter
to--where is it?" she continued.

Mrs. Brookenham had received with no flush of betrayal the various
discriminations thus conveyed by her visitor, and her only revenge for
the moment was to look as sweetly resigned as if she really saw what was
in them. Where were they going for Easter? She had to think an instant,
but she brought it out. "Oh to Pewbury--we've been engaged so long that
I had forgotten. We go once a year--one does it for Edward."

"Ah you spoil him!" smiled the Duchess. "Who's to be there?"

"Oh the usual thing, I suppose. A lot of my lord's tiresome supporters."

"To pay his debt? Then why are you poor things asked?"

Mrs. Brookenham looked, on this, quite adorably--that is most
wonderingly--grave. "How do I know, my dear Jane, why in the world we're
ever asked anywhere? Fancy people wanting Edward!" she exhaled with
stupefaction. "Yet we can never get off Pewbury."

"You're better for getting on, cara mia, than for getting off!" the
Duchess blandly returned. She was a person of no small presence, filling
her place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeed
rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were
well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a "figure" or
any of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman.
She was secretly at war moreover, in this endeavour, with a lurking no
less than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn't
look well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good.
There were definite ways of escape, none of which she neglected and from
the total of which, as she flattered herself, the air of distinction
almost mathematically resulted. This air corresponded superficially with
her acquired Calabrian sonorities, from her voluminous title down, but
the colourless hair, the passionless forehead, the mild cheek and
long lip of the British matron, the type that had set its trap for her
earlier than any other, were elements difficult to deal with and were
at moments all a sharp observer saw. The battle-ground the