“Lord Tatham!  Oh, Susy!” wailed Mrs. Penfold; “you don’t think that?”

“Yes, I do,” said Susan, with resolution.  “And now she’s letting him down gently.”

“And never said a word to you or me!  Oh, Susy, she couldn’t be so unkind.”

Mrs. Penfold’s pink and white countenance, on which age had as yet laid so light a finger, showed the approach of tears.  She and Susy were sitting in a leafy recess of the garden; Lydia had gone after tea to see old Dobbs and his daughter.

“That’s all this friendship business, she’s so full of,” said Susy.  “If she’d accepted him, she’d have told us, of course.  Now he’s plucked as a lover, and readmitted as a friend.  And one doesn’t betray a friend’s secrets—­even to one’s relations.  There it is.”

“I never heard such nonsense,” cried Mrs. Penfold.  “I used to try that kind of thing—­making friends with young men.  It was no use at all.  They always proposed.”

Susan’s state of tension—­caused by the fact that her Fifth Act had been a veritable shambles—­broke up in laughter.  She couldn’t help kissing her mother.

“You’re priceless, darling, you really are.  I wouldn’t say anything to her about it, if I were you,” she added, more seriously.  “I shall attack her, of course, some day.”

“But she still goes on seeing him,” said Mrs. Penfold, pursuing her own bewildered thoughts.

“That’s her theory.  She sees him—­they write to each other—­they probably call each other ‘Lydia’ and ‘Harry.’”

“Susy!”

“Why not?  Christian names are very common nowadays.”

“In my youth if any girl called a young man by his Christian name, it meant she was engaged to him,” said Mrs. Penfold with energy, her look clearing.  “And if they do call each other ‘Lydia’ and ‘Harry’ you may say what you like, Susy, but she will be engaged to him some day—­if not now, in the winter, or some time.”

“Well, you may be right.  Anyway, don’t talk to her, mother.  Leave her alone!”

Mrs. Penfold sighed deeply.

“Just think, Susy, what it would be like”—­she dropped her voice—­“’Countess Tatham!’—­can’t you see her going to the drawing-room—­with her feathers and her tiara?  Wouldn’t she be lovely—­wouldn’t she have the world at her feet?  Think what your father would have said.”

“I don’t believe those things ever enter Lydia’s mind!”

Mrs. Penfold slowly shook her head.

“It isn’t human,” she said plaintively, “it really isn’t.”  And in a mournful silence she returned to her embroidery.

Susan invaded her sister’s bedroom late that night, and found Lydia before her looking-glass enveloped in shimmering clouds of hair.  The younger sister sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded.

“Why are you so slack about this Delorme plan, Lydia?  I don’t believe you want to go.”

Lydia turned with a start.