ustine presently
observed, not in key with the prevailing gaiety. Mrs. Ansell, usually so
tinged with the colours of her environment, preserved on this occasion a
grey neutrality of tone which was the only break in the general
brightness. It was not in her graceful person to express anything as
gross as disapproval, yet that sentiment was manifest, to the nice
observer, in a delicate aloofness which made the waves of laughter fall
back from her, and spread a circle of cloudy calm about her end of the
table. Justine had never been greatly drawn to Mrs. Ansell. Her own
adaptability was not in the least akin to the older woman's studied
self-effacement; and the independence of judgment which Justine
preserved in spite of her perception of divergent standpoints made her a
little contemptuous of an excess of charity that seemed to have been
acquired at the cost of all individual convictions. To-night for the
first time she felt in Mrs. Ansell a secret sympathy with her own
fears; and a sense of this tacit understanding made her examine with
sudden interest the face of her unexpected ally.... After all, what did
she know of Mrs. Ansell's history--of the hidden processes which had
gradually subdued her own passions and desires, making of her, as it
were, a mere decorative background, a connecting link between other
personalities? Perhaps, for a woman alone in the world, without the
power and opportunity that money gives, there was no alternative between
letting one's individuality harden into a small dry nucleus of egoism,
or diffuse itself thus in the interstices of other lives--and there fell
upon Justine the chill thought that just such a future might await her
if she missed the liberating gift of personal happiness....

* * * * *

Neither that night nor the next day had she a private word with
Bessy--and it became evident, as the hours passed, that Mrs. Amherst was
deliberately postponing the moment when they should find themselves
alone. But the Lynbrook party was to disperse on the Monday; and Bessy,
who hated early rising, and all the details of housekeeping, tapped at
Justine's door late on Sunday night to ask her to speed the departing
visitors.

She pleaded this necessity as an excuse for her intrusion, and the
playful haste of her manner showed a nervous shrinking from any renewal
of confidence; but as she leaned in the doorway, fingering the diamond
chain about her neck, while one