At this point she realized that Mrs. Frayling was finishing a sentence to the beginning of which she had not paid the smallest attention.  That was disgracefully rude.

“So I am to go home then, dearest child, and break it to Marshall that he stands no chance—­my poor Marshall, who has no delightful presents with which to plead his cause!”

“Mr. Wace?—­Plead his cause?  What cause?  I am so sorry, Henrietta—­forgive me.  It’s too dreadful, but I am afraid I wasn’t quite listening”—­this with most engaging confusion.

“Yes—­his cause.  I should have supposed his state of mind had been transparently evident for many a long day.”

“But indeed—­Henrietta, you must be mistaken.  I don’t know what you mean”—­the other interposed smitten by the liveliest distress and alarm.

The elder lady waved aside her outcry with admirable playfulness and determination.

“Oh!  I quite realize how crazy it must appear on his part, poor dear fellow, seeing he has so little to offer from the worldly and commercial standpoint.  As he himself says—­’the desire of the moth for the star, of the night for the morrow.’  Still money and position are not everything in life, are they?  Talent is an asset and so, I humbly believe, is the pure devotion of a good man’s heart.  These count for something, or used to do so when I was your age.  But then the women of my generation were educated in a less sophisticated school.  You modern young persons are wiser than we were no doubt, in that you are less romantic, less easily touched.—­I have not ventured to give Marshall much encouragement.  It would have been on my conscience to foster hopes which might be dashed.  And yet I own, darling child, your manner not once nor twice, during our happy meetings at the Pavilion, when he read aloud to us or sang, gave me the impression you were not entirely indifferent.  He, I know, has thought so too—­for I have not been able to resist letting him pour out his hopes and fears to me now and then.  I could not refuse either him or myself that indulgence, because”—­

Mrs. Frayling rose, and, bending over our much tried and now positively flabbergasted damsel, brushed her hair with a butterfly kiss.

“Because my own hopes were also not a little engaged,” she said.  “Your manner to my poor Marshall, your willingness to let him so often be with you made me—­perhaps foolishly—­believe not only that his sad life might be crowned by a signal blessing, but you might be given to me some day as a daughter of whom I could be intensely proud.  I have grown to look upon Marshall in the light of a son, and his wife would”—­

Damaris had risen also.  She stood at bay, white, strained, her lips quivering.

“Do—­do you mean that I have behaved badly to Mr. Wace, Henrietta?  That I have flirted with him?”

Mrs. Frayling drew her mouth into a naughty little knot.  There were awkward corners to be negotiated in these questions.  She avoided them by boldly striking for the open.