mood this morning--a mood which, let it be
said at once, was one to which she was often subject, but it had been
more than usually apparent in her for the last few days. She began by
hoping, in the politest way, after she had sat about five minutes at
the luncheon-table, that Miss Abingdon did not mind the window being
opened, although it was a well-known fact that Miss Abingdon held the
old-fashioned theory that only the furniture should enjoy fresh air,
and that windows should be opened when rooms were unoccupied. So many
people rose to do Miss Sherard's bidding that Miss Abingdon, of course,
found it quite hopeless to try to assert herself. Kitty, further, had
a ridiculous way of eating, which Miss Abingdon could not approve. She
ate mere morsels of everything and talked the whole time, very often
with the air of a gourmet; and she would lay down her knife and fork,
after a meal such as a healthy blackbird might have enjoyed, as though
she had finished some aldermanic feast. She accepted a glass of Miss
Abingdon's very special claret and never even touched it; and later, in
one of the pauses of her elaborate trifling at luncheon, she told a
funny story which made every one laugh, and caused even Canon
Wrottesley to attempt to conceal the fact that he saw the point of the
story.

The worst of it was that Toffy encouraged her in everything she said
and did. These two had met in London this year, and had stayed at the
same house for Ascot, and it must be admitted by a faithful historian
that in her own particular wilful and provoking way Kitty had flirted
outrageously with Toffy. To-day she offered to cut up his food for him
because his right hand was still in a sling; and when Miss Abingdon
suggested, with deliberate emphasis in her voice, that a footman should
do it for him, Kitty pretended that the wounded man could not possibly
feed himself, and gave him pineapple to eat on the end of her fork.

When she sat in the veranda drinking coffee after lunch, she showed
Canon Wrottesley how to blow wedding-rings with the smoke of her own
favourite cigarettes; and she talked to him as though his early youth
might have been spent in a racing stable, and with the air of one
expert to another.

'I hear,' said Canon Wrottesley, when Miss Sherard had begun to play a
left-handed game of croquet with the crippled young man, 'that Sir
Nigel is going to ride at the Sedgwick Races. I was a fearless
horseman myself at one t