“But of course I want to go!  It’s the greatest chance.  I shall learn a heap of things.”

Susan nodded.

“All the same you don’t seem a bit keen.”

Lydia fidgeted.

“Well, you see, I admire Mr. Delorme’s work as much as ever.  But—­”

“You don’t like Mr. Delorme?  The greatest egotist I ever saw,” said the uncompromising Susan, who, as a dramatist, prided herself on a knowledge of character.

“Ah, but a great, great painter!” cried Lydia.  “Don’t dissuade me, Susan.  Professionally—­I must do it!”

“It’s not because Mr. Delorme is an egotist, that you don’t want to go away,” said Susan, quietly.  “It’s for quite a different reason.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s because—­no, I don’t mind if I do make you angry!—­it’s because you’re so desperately interested in Mr. Faversham.”

“Really, Susan!” The cloud of hair was thrown back, and Lydia’s face emerged, the clear, indignant eyes shining in the candlelight.

“Oh, I don’t mean that you’re in love with him—­wish you were!  But you’re roping him in—­just like Lord Tatham.  And as he’s the latest, he’s the most—­well, exciting!”

Susan with her chin in her hands, and her dusky countenance very much alive, seemed to be playing her sister with cautious mockery—­feeling her way.

“Dear Susy—­I don’t know why you’re so unkind—­and unjust,” said Lydia, after a moment, in the tone of one wounded.

“How am I unkind?  You’re the practical one of us three.  You run us and take care of us.  We know we’re stupids compared to you.  But really mamma and I stand aghast at the way in which you manage your love affairs!”

“My love affairs!” cried Lydia, “but I haven’t got any!”

“Do you mean to say that Lord Tatham is not in love with you?” said Susan severely—­“that he wouldn’t marry you to-morrow if you’d let him?”

Lydia flushed, but her look was neither resentful nor repentant.

“Why should we put it in that way?” she said, ardently.  “Isn’t it possible to look at men in some other light than as possible husbands?  Haven’t they got hearts and minds—­don’t they think and feel—­just like us?”

“Oh, no, not like us,” said Susan hastily—­“never.”

Lydia smiled.

“Well, enough like us, anyway.  Do you ever think, Susy!” she seized her sister’s wrist and looked her in the eyes—­“that there are a million more women than men in this country?  It is evident we can’t all be married.  Well, then, I withdraw from the competition!  It’s demoralizing to women; and it’s worse for men.  But I don’t intend to confine myself to women friends.”

“They bore you,” said Susy sharply; “confess it at once!”

“How unkind of you!” Lydia’s protest was almost tearful.  “You know I have at least four”—­she recalled their names—­“who love me, and I them.  But neither men nor women should live in a world apart.  They complete each other.”