Misgivings continued to pursue her during the ensuing evening and even interfered with her slumbers during the night.  This—­most unusual occurrence—­rendered her fretful.  She reproached her tractable and distressed little General with having encouraged her to walk much too far.  In future he swore to insist on the carriage, however confidently she might assert the need of active exertion.  She pointed out the fallacy of rushing to extremes; which rather cruelly floored him, since “rushing,” in any shape or form, had conspicuously passed out of his programme some considerable time ago.

“My wife is not at all herself,” he told Marshall Wace, at breakfast next morning—­“quite overdone, I am sorry to say, and upset.  I blame myself.  I must keep a tight hand on her and forbid over exertion.”

With a small spoon, savagely, daringly he beat in the top of his boiled egg.

“I must be more watchful,” he added.  “Her nervous energy is deceptive.  I must refuse to let it override my better judgment and take me in.”

By luncheon time, however, Henrietta was altogether herself, save for a pretty pensiveness, and emerged with all her accustomed amiability from this temporary eclipse.

The Fraylings occupied a small detached villa, built in the grounds of the Hotel de la Plage—­a rival and venerably senior establishment to the Grand Hotel—­situate just within the confines of St. Augustin, where the town curves along the glistering shore to the western horn of the little bay.  At the back of it runs the historic high road from Marseilles to the Italian frontier, passing through Cannes and Nice.  Behind it, too, runs the railway with its many tunnels, following the same, though a somewhat less serpentine, course along the gracious coast.

To the ex-Anglo-Indian woman, society is as imperative a necessity as water to a fish.  She must foregather or life loses all its savour; must entertain, be entertained, rub shoulders generally or she is lost.  Henrietta Frayling suffered the accustomed fate, though to speak of rubbing shoulders in connection with her is to express oneself incorrectly to the verge of grossness.  Her shoulders were of an order far too refined to rub or be rubbed.  Nevertheless, after the shortest interval consistent with self-respect, such society as St. Augustin and its neighbourhood afforded found itself enmeshed in her dainty net.  Mrs. Frayling’s villa became a centre, where all English-speaking persons met.  There she queened it, with her General as loyal henchman, and Marshall Wace as a professor of drawing-room talents of most varied sort.