“I shouldn’t dream of arguing with such a child!”

“Well, all I know is Ferrier seemed to admire her performance.”

Mrs. Fotheringham paused a moment, then said, with harsh intensity: 

“Men have not the same sense of responsibility.”

“You mean their brains are befogged by a pretty face?”

“They don’t put non-essentials aside, as we do.  A girl like that, in love with what she calls ‘glory’ and ‘prestige,’ is a dangerous and demoralizing influence.  That glorification of the Army is at the root of half our crimes!”

Mrs. Fotheringham’s pale skin had flushed till it made one red with her red hair.  Lady Niton looked at her with mingled amusement and irritation.  She wondered why men married such women as Isabel Fotheringham.  Certainly Ned Fotheringham himself—­deceased some three years before this date—­had paid heavily for his mistake; especially through the endless disputes which had arisen between his children and his second wife—­partly on questions of religion, partly on this matter of the Army.  Mrs. Fotheringham was an agnostic; her stepsons, the children of a devout mother, were churchmen.  Influenced, moreover, by a small coterie, in which, to the dismay of her elderly husband, she had passed most of her early married years, she detested the Army as a brutal influence on the national life.  Her youngest step-son, however, had insisted on becoming a soldier.  She broke with him, and with his brothers who supported him.  Now a childless widow, without ties and moderately rich, she was free to devote herself to her ideas.  In former days she would have been a religious bigot of the first water; the bigotry was still there; only the subjects of it were changed.

Lady Niton delighted in attacking her; yet was not without a certain respect for her.  Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her.  How people came by them, she herself could never imagine.

On this particular morning, however, Mrs. Fotheringham did not allow herself as long a wrangle as usual with her old adversary.  She went off, carrying an armful of letters with large enclosures, and Lady Niton understood that for the rest of the morning she would be as much absorbed by her correspondence—­mostly on public questions—­as the Leader of the Opposition himself, to whom the library was sacredly given up.

“When that woman takes a dislike,” she thought to herself, “it sticks!  She has taken a dislike to the Mallory girl.  Well, if Oliver wants her, let him fight for her.  I hope she won’t drop into his mouth!  Mallory!  Mallory!  I wonder where she comes from, and who her people are.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile Diana was sitting among her letters, which mainly concerned the last details of the Beechcote furnishing.  She and Mrs. Colwood were now “Muriel” and “Diana” to each other, and Mrs. Colwood had been admitted to a practical share in Diana’s small anxieties.