“Oh! it is natural, perfectly natural at your rather thoughtless time of life.  Only Marshall’s admiration for you is very deep.  He has the poetic temperament which makes for suffering, for despair as well as for rapture.  And his disillusionments, poor boy, have been so grievously many.—­But Colonel Carteret—­yes—­dearest child, I do quite follow.—­It’s an old story.  He has always had des bonnes fortunes.”

Since her return to Europe, Mrs. Frayling had become much addicted to embellishing her conversation with such foreign tags, not invariably, it may be added, quite correctly applied or quoted.

“Women could never resist him in former days in India.  They went down before his charms like a row of ninepins before a ball.  I don’t deny a passing tendresse for him myself, though I was married and very happily married.  So I can well comprehend how he may take a girl’s fancy by storm. Sans peur et sans reproche, he must seem to her.—­And so in the main, I dare say, he is.  At worst a little easy-going, owing to his cultivation of the universally benevolent attitude.  Charity has a habit of beginning at home, you know; and a man usually views his own delinquencies at least as leniently as he views those of others.  But that leniency is part of his charm—­which I admit is great.—­Heaven forbid, I should undermine your faith in it, if there is anything settled between you and him.”

“But there isn’t, there isn’t,” Damaris broke in, distressed beyond all calmness of demeanour.  “You go too fast, Henrietta.  You assume too much.  Nothing is settled of—­of that sort.  Nothing of that sort has ever been said.”

Mrs. Frayling raised her eyebrows, cast down her eyes, and fingered the bunch of trinkets hanging from her gold chain in silence for a few seconds.  The ring of sincerity was unquestionable—­only where did that land her?  Had not she, in point of fact, very really gone too fast?  In defeat Henrietta became unscrupulous.

“Merely another flirtation, Damaris?” she said.  “Darling child, I am just a wee bit disappointed in you.”

Which, among her many fibs, may rank amongst her most impudent and full-fed, though by no means her last.

Here, the door opened behind her.  Henrietta turned alertly, hailing any interruption which—­her bolt being shot—­might facilitate her retreat from a now most embarrassing situation.  After all she had planted more than one seed, which might fruitfully grow, so at that she could leave matters.—­The interruption, however, took a form for which she was unprepared.  To her intense disgust her nerves played her false.  She gave the oddest little stifled squeak as she met Charles Verity’s glance, fixed upon her in cool, slightly ironic scrutiny.