of battle to his own side, and an omen of defeat to the enemy.  His mots still circulated, and something of his gift for them had remained with the formidable woman who now represented him.  At a time when short dresses for women were coming in universally, she always wore hers long and ample, though they were looped up by various economical and thrifty devices; on the top of the dress—­which might have covered a crinoline, but didn’t—­a shawl, long after every one else had ceased to wear shawls; and above the shawl a hat, of the large mushroom type and indecipherable age.  And in the midst of this antique and generally untidy gear, the youngest and liveliest face imaginable, under snow-white hair:  black eyes full of Irish fun, a pugnacious and humorous mouth, and the general look of one so steeped in the rich, earthy stuff of life that she might have stepped out of a novel of Fielding’s or a page of “Lavengro.”

When Constance entered, Mrs. Mulholland turned round suddenly to look at her.  It was a glance full of good will, but penetrating also, and critical.  It was as though the person from whom it came had more than a mere stranger’s interest in the tall young lady in white, now advancing towards Miss Wenlock.

But she gave no immediate sign of it.  She and Miss Wenlock had been discussing an Oxford acquaintance, the newly-married wife of one of the high officials of the University.  Miss Wenlock, always amiable, had discreetly pronounced her “charming.”

“Oh, so dreadfully charming!” said Mrs. Mulholland with a shrug, “and so sentimental that she hardens every heart.  Mine becomes stone when I talk to her.  She cried when I went to tea with her—­a wedding visit if you please!  I think it was because one of the kangaroos at Blenheim had just died in childbirth.  I told her it was a mercy, considering that any of them would hug us to death if they got a chance.  Are you a sentimentalist, Lady Constance?” Mrs. Mulholland turned gaily to the girl beside her, but still with the same touch of something coolly observant in her manner.

Constance laughed.

“I never can cry when I ought to,” she said lightly.

“Then you should go to tea with Mrs. Crabbett.  She could train anybody to cry—­in time.  She cultivates with care, and waters with tears, every sorrow that blows!  Most of us run away from our troubles, don’t we?”

Constance again smiled assent.  But suddenly her face stiffened.  It was like a flower closing, or a light blown out.

Mrs. Mulholland thought—­“She has lost a father and a mother within a year, and I have reminded her.  I am a cruel, clumsy wretch.”

And thenceforward she roared so gently that Miss Wenlock, who never said a malicious thing herself, and was therefore entirely dependent on Sarah Mulholland’s tongue for the salt of life, felt herself cheated of her usual Sunday entertainment.  For there were few Sundays in term-time when Mrs. Mulholland did not “drop in” for tea and talk at Beaumont before going on to the Cathedral service.