Prim’s face did not welcome the interruption.

‘This is my sister, Prudentia—­Mrs. Coles,’ she said.  ’It is Miss Kennedy, Prudentia.’

A most gracious, not to say ingratiating, bend and smile of Mrs. Coles answered this.  She was a tall, thin figure, dressed in black.  It threw out the pale face and flaxen bandeaux and light grey eyes into the more relief.

‘I am delighted to see Miss Kennedy,’ she said.  ’It is quite a hoped-for pleasure.  But I have seen her before—­just seen her.’

Wych Hazel bowed—­remembering with some amusement Mr. Rollo’s caracole on the former occasion all about Mrs. Coles.  Privately she wished she had not promised to stay to dinner.

’I was frightened to death at your riding’—­the lady went on.  ‘Did your horse start at anything?’

‘My horse starts very often when I am on him,’ said Wych Hazel laughing.

‘Does he!  And do you think that is quite safe?’

’Why not?—­if I start too.  The chief danger in such cases is in being left behind.’

Wych Hazel was getting her witch mood on fast.  Mrs. Coles looked a trifle puzzled.

‘But my dear!’ she said, ’the danger of that, I should think, would be if the other horse started.’

‘O no, ma’am,’ said Hazel gravely.  ’My escorts never even so much as think of running away from me.’

At that point Primrose’s gravity gave way, and she burst into a laugh.  Mrs. Coles changed the subject.

’I have been very impatient to see one I have heard so much of,’ she began again.  ’In fact I have heard of you always.  I should have called at Chickaree, but I couldn’t get any one to take me.  Arthur, he was busy—­and Dr. Maryland never goes anywhere but to visit his people—­Prim goes everywhere, but it is not where I want to go, for pleasure; and Dane I asked, and he wouldn’t.’

‘He did not say he wouldn’t, Prudentia,’ remarked her sister.

‘He didn’t say he would,’ returned Mrs. Coles, with a peculiar laugh; ’and I knew what that meant.  O, I should have got there some time.  I will yet.’

Miss Kennedy bowed—­she believed the fault must be hers.  But she had not quite understood—­or had confused things—­in her press of engagements.

Mrs. Coles graciously assumed that there had been no failure in that quarter.  And Dr. Maryland came in, and the dinner.  A nice little square party they were, for Dr. Arthur was not at home; and yet somehow the conversation flowed in more barren channels than was ever the wont at that table in Wych Hazel’s experience.  A great deal of talk was about what people were doing; a little about what they were wearing; an enormous amount about what they were saying.  Part of this seemed to be religious talk too, and yet what was the matter with it?  Or was it with Wych Hazel that something was the matter?  Primrose and Dr. Maryland then shared the trouble, for whatever they said was in attempted diversion or correction or emendation.  Certainly among them all the talk did not languish.