Lady D——­ has insisted on my going on a short yachting cruise with her and Miss Field, the week after next.  She wants to show me the West Coast, and they have a small cottage in the Shetlands where we should stay a night or two and watch the sea-birds.  It may keep me away another week or fortnight, but you won’t mind, dear, will you?  I am getting famously rested, and really the house is very agreeable.  In these surroundings Lady Dunstable is less of the bas-bleu, and more of the woman.  You must make up your mind to come another year!  You would soon get over your prejudice and make friends with her.  She looks after us all—­she talks brilliantly—­and I haven’t seen her rude to anybody since I arrived.  There are some very nice people here, and altogether I am enjoying it.  Don’t you work too hard—­and don’t let the servants harry you.  Post just going.  Good night!

Another week or fortnight!—­five weeks, or nearly, altogether.  Doris was sorely wounded.  She went to look at herself in the mirror over the chimney-piece.  Was she not thin and haggard for want of rest and holiday?  Would not the summer weather be all done by the time Arthur graciously condescended to come back to her?  Were there not dark lines under her eyes, and was she not feeling a limp and wretched creature, unfit for any exertion?  What was wrong with her?  She hated her drawing—­she hated everything.  And there was Arthur, proposing to go yachting with Lady Dunstable!—­while she might toil and moil—­all alone—­in this August London!  The tears rushed into her eyes.  Her pride only just saved her from a childish fit of crying.

But in the end resentment came to her aid, together with an angry and redoubled curiosity as to what might be happening to Lady Dunstable’s precious son while Lady Dunstable was thus absorbed in robbing other women of their husbands.  Doris hurried her small household affairs, that she might get off early to the studio; and as she put on her hat, her fancy drew vindictive pictures of the scene which any day might realise—­the scene at Franick Castle, when Lady Dunstable, unsuspecting, should open the letter which announced to her the advent of her daughter-in-law, Elena, nee Flink—­or should gather the same unlovely fact from a casual newspaper paragraph.  As for interfering between her and her rich deserts, Doris vowed to herself she would not lift a finger.  That incredibly forgiving young woman, Miss Wigram, might do as she pleased.  But when a mother pursues her own selfish ends so as to make her only son dislike and shun her, let her take what comes.  It was in the mood of an Erinnys that Doris made her way northwards to Campden Hill, and nobody perceiving the slight erect figure in the corner of the omnibus could possibly have guessed at the storm within.