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if that was not exactly what she wanted, neither was it a thing to be despised. She had, in fact, been at some pains to secure it, and she did not regret the trouble that she had taken. Only she was a little afraid that Monsignor Nolan, for all his courtesy, amiability and sympathy, saw through her.

IT

CHAPTER XVIII

CHRISTMAS AT KNARESBY

was Mrs. Scarth who proposed that Ethel Dallison should be asked to dine and sleep at Knaresby on Christmas Day. It had been arranged that she should, in any case, come over early, so as to enjoy the privileges afforded by the Established Church, and Mrs. Scarth thought that, as there was no house-party at Lannowe, she could very well be spared by her friends there until the following morning. Bessie was unable to follow her mother's reasoning and (being ignorant of the good lady's benevolent scheme for Nigel's future) saw no particular object in such insistent hospitality. Her only remark, however, was that Lord Lannowe and Monica would probably think the invitation to their guest rather an odd one. It must be assumed that they either did not think so or knew how to disguise their feelings; for the invitation was accepted and almost the first thing that Ethel said after her arrival was:

"It is so good of you to have me, and I don't feel that I am behaving rudely or ungratefully to my kind host and hostess by leaving them. I am sure they are really glad to be free from heretical intrusion today."

Somebody at Knaresby-Cuthbert Gretton, to witwould have been glad enough to be free from the intrusion of Miss Dallison. This was ungallant of him, considering what his dispositions had been in the earlier

part of the year which was drawing towards a close, yet pardonable, in consideration of what they now were. From the moment that she joined herself to him, walking down to church, and was rather unnecessarily and ostentatiously left in sole possession of her companion by the rest of the large party, he foresaw that his Christmas was hardly likely to be a happy one. Not that he found her society disagreeable in itself—she was, on the contrary, more charming than he had ever known her before-only he was uncomfortably conscious of looking as though he wished to monopolise it, which was very far indeed from being the case. And then Bessie was neither as kind nor as generous as everybody ought to be on the 25th of December. On her way to Divine service and on her return from the same she took care to surround herself by an inexpugnable phalanx of brethren, to some of whom she made occasional remarks which caused them to laugh and wink in an unmannerly fashion; she ignored pleading looks which she could not have helped seeing, and during luncheon—which meal was a sort of premature dinner and occupied a long time-she appeared to be simply oblivious of her cousin's existence. She was in high spirits, too, and that rendered her general behaviour the more unfeeling.

In the afternoon everybody went down to the lake to skate. The Knaresby stretch of ornamental water could not compare in point of area with those at Rixmouth and Lannowe; still the effect of the thaw had been to provide a sufficiency of excellent ice for the exploits of so skilled a performer as Miss Dallison, who had brought her skates with her, proved herself to be. She was so far superior to all competitors that they did not, after the first few minutes, even attempt to vie with her, but were contented to watch and applaud her graceful evolutions; had it been her wish to put Miss Bessie's

nose out of joint, her success would have been complete. But in truth she was as exempt from such an ignoble desire as she was from jealousy of one so obviously unfitted to compete with her in any field. What she did realise, with unwonted discomfiture and with a tightness about the region of the heart which she had perhaps never before felt in her life, was that she was failing, for some reason or other, to fascinate the man upon whom she was bringing her fascinations to bear. He was civil, he was attentive, he paid her all the compliments that were her due; but he was not at all what he had been in Paris, nor even what he had been during the summer, and she wondered why. As the simplest and most direct means of finding out, she ended by asking him.

"You don't seem to be quite yourself today," she remarked. "Is anything the matter? Have I, for instance, been so unfortunate as to rub you the wrong way?"

At the moment when this question was put they were alone, a game of hockey having been started by the boys in which Bessie was taking part, but which they had not been invited to join. Cuthbert, withdrawing a wistful eye from the scrimmage, replied, with a touch of irritability :

"Oh, no, of course not. I am sorry that I strike you as being out of sorts; but it's rather a mistake to eat plum-pudding in the middle of the day, don't you think so?"

She looked at the magnificently healthy specimen of humanity beside her and returned, "You might eat anything you liked, or didn't like, at any hour of the day or night and be none the worse. And you are displeased with me about something, though you don't choose to say so. Won't you tell me what it is?"

He jerked up his broad shoulders. "Oh, well," he answered, "if it comes to that, Nigel Scarth is a friend of mine, you know."

"I think I might almost venture to say that he is a friend of mine also, and that I have behaved like a friend to him."

"Ah, that remains to be seen! Personally, I am all for playing the game, and it doesn't appear to me that you have played it, Miss Dallison; though of course you may have meant well. Not that it is any business of mine; only you asked me."

Ethel was pleased and reassured by this rejoinder, which seemed to point to a very natural explanation of her companion's being neither the one nor the other.

"Do you remember," she asked gently, "the first evening that we met at the Whartons' dance, and my telling you that I liked Englishmen ? "

"Quite well."

"That was another way of saying that I liked you; for you personify the best type of Englishmen. And do you remember a little talk that we had in the garden at Lannowe just before your friend went abroad?"

"Yes I remember that, too."

"Well, I like Englishmen of your sort because you 'go straight,' as you call it, and 'play the game'; but what spoils you a little, I think, is that you are too opinionated and that you make no allowance for people whose standard has to be rather less simple and rigid than yours. Women, unfortunately, can't always go straight and play the game."

"I don't see why they shouldn't."

"No, you don't see why they shouldn't; that is just what I complain of. You were angry with me, and I suppose you are still, for opening your friend's eyes and Monica's in the only way in which it was possible to

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