“And, though I hardly like to make such accusation, none too scrupulous in her methods.  She leads you on with a number of irrelevant comments and questions, until you find she’s extracted from you a whole host of things you never meant to say.  She is far too inquisitive—­too possessive.”

Miss Felicia ended on an almost violent note.

“Yes, Henrietta has a tiresome little habit of having been there first,” Damaris said, a touch of weariness in her tone remembering past encounters.

Miss Felicia, caught by that warning tone, patted her niece’s rather undiscoverable knee—­undiscoverable because still covered by a heavy fur-lined driving coat—­lovingly, excitedly.

“If you choose to believe her, darling,” she cried, “which I, for one, emphatically don’t.”

Following which ardent profession of faith, or rather of scepticism, Miss Felicia attempted to treat the subject broadly.  She soared to mountain-tops of social and psychological astuteness; but only to make hasty return upon her gentler self, deny her strictures, and snatch at the skirts of vanishing Christian charity.

“Men aren’t so easily led away,” she hopefully declared.  “Nor can I think Mrs. Frayling so irresistible to each and all as she wishes one to imagine.  She must magnify the number and, still more, the permanence of her conquests.  No doubt she has been very much admired.  I know she was lovely.  I saw her once ages ago, at Tullingworth.  Dearest Charles,” the words came softly, as though her lips hesitated to pronounce them in so trivial a connection—­“asked me to call on her as I was staying in the neighbourhood.  She had a different surname then, by the way, I remember.”

“Henrietta has had four in all—­counting in her maiden name, I mean.”

“Exactly,” Miss Felicia argued, “and that, no doubt, does prejudice me a little against her.  I suppose it is wrong, but when a woman marries so often one can’t help feeling as if she ended by not being married at all—­a mere change of partners, don’t you know, which does seem rather shocking.  It suggests such an absence of deep feeling.—­Poor thing, I dare say that is just her nature; still it doesn’t attract me.  In fact it gives me a creep.—­But I quite own she is pretty still, and extraordinarily well dressed—­only too well dressed, don’t you know, that is for the country.—­More tea, darling.  Yes, Mrs. Cooper’s scones are particularly good this afternoon.—­I wish I liked her better, Mrs. Frayling, I mean, because she evidently intends to be here a lot in future.  She expressed the warmest affection for you.  She was very possessive about you, more I felt than she’d any real right to be.  That, I’m afraid, put my back up—­that and one or two other things.  She and General Frayling think of settling in Stourmouth for good, if Mr. Wace is appointed to the Deadham curacy.”

“The curacy here?” Damaris echoed, a rather lurid light breaking in on her.