“Laura, neither you nor any one else can set things right.  They have been wrong too long.  The worst is, I cannot see what the evil is, as regards Val.  If I ask him he repels me, or laughs at me, and tells me I am fanciful.  That he has some secret trouble I have long known:  his days are unhappy, his nights restless; often when he thinks me asleep I am listening to his sighs.  I am glad you have come home; I have wanted a true friend to confide these troubles to, and I could only speak of them to one of the family.”

“It sounds like a romance,” cried Laura.  “Some secret grief!  What can it be?”

They were interrupted by a commotion.  Maude had been threading a splendid ring all the colours of the rainbow, and now exhibited it for the benefit of admiring beholders.

“Papa—­Aunt Margaret—­look at my ring.”

Lord Hartledon nodded pleasantly at the child from his distant seat; Lady Margaret appeared not to have heard; and Maude caught up a soft ball and threw it at her aunt.

Unfortunately, it took a wrong direction, and struck the nodding dowager on the nose.  She rose up in a fury and some commotion ensued.

“Make me a ring, Maude,” little Anne lisped when the dowager had subsided into her chair again.  Maude took no notice; her finger was still lifted with the precious ornament.

“Can you see it from your sofa, Edward?”

The boy rose and stretched himself.  “Pretty well.  You have put it on the wrong finger, Maude.  Ladies don’t wear rings on the little finger.”

“But it won’t go on the others,” said Maude dolefully:  “it’s too small.”

“Make a larger one.”

“Make one for me, Maude,” again broke in Anne’s little voice.

“No, I won’t!” returned Maude.  “You are big enough to thread beads for yourself.”

“No, she’s not,” said Reginald.  “Make her one, Maude.”

“No, don’t, Maude,” said Edward.  “Let them do things for themselves.”

“You hear!” whispered Lady Hartledon.

“I do hear.  And Val sits there and never reproves them; and the old dowager’s head and eyes are nodding and twinkling approval.”

Lady Laura was an energetic little woman, thin, and pale, and excessively active, with a propensity for setting the world straight, and a tongue as unceremoniously free as the dowager’s.  In the cause of justice she would have stood up to battle with a giant.  Lady Hartledon was about to make some response, but she bade her wait; her attention was absorbed by the children.  Perhaps the truth was that she was burning to have a say in the matter herself.

“Maude,” she called out, “if that ring is too small for you, it would do for Anne, and be kind of you to give it her.”

Maude looked dubious.  Left to herself, the child would have been generous enough.  She glanced at the dowager.

“May I give it her, grand’ma?”

Grand’ma was conveniently deaf.  She would rather have cut the ring in two than it should be given to the hated child:  but, on the other hand, she did not care to offend Laura Level, who possessed inconveniently independent opinions, and did not shrink from proclaiming them.  Seizing the poker, she stirred the fire, and created a divertissement.