"Oh, I've got heaps of time. It doesn't take me a moment. I'll race you easily, even now."

Then a thought entered Leonetta's mind, which, to her credit be it said, she resisted at first, but which was too overpowering to be completely banished. It struck her for a moment that there was something faintly comical, almost pathetically ridiculous, in this elderly matron taking such laborious and elaborate pains to make herself attractive. Try as she might, Leonetta, from her angle of vision of seventeen years, could not repress the question: "What was it all for? What was the good of it all? Who could possibly care? Was the end commensurate with the exhaustive and exhausting means?" As the fierce light from the window beat down upon her mother's face, it seemed so old, so wondrously old, that all the formidable machinery of beautification about the room struck a chord of compassion in the flapper's breast, which was, however, at once compounded with humour in her mind. And then she could control herself no longer, and was forced to smile,--one of those broad mirthful smiles that are parlously near a laugh. Feeling, however, that her mood was one of derision, she turned quickly aside,--but not soon enough successfully to evade her mother's observant scrutiny.

Mrs. Delarayne was too well aware of the awkward possibilities of the situation, and moreover too acutely sensitive generally, to be in any doubt as to the meaning of her younger daughter's amusement, and the flush beneath her ears spread to her cheeks. Simultaneously, however, her handsome face seemed suddenly to grow wonderfully stern and composed, and her eyes flashed with the fire which every woman seems to hold in reserve for an anti-feminine attack.

"Wilmott," she said quietly, "will you leave the room a moment? I'll ring when I want you."

Without even turning round to satisfy her curiosity, the well-trained servant dropped on to the corner of the bed the things she held in her hands, and was gone.

For some unaccountable reason Leonetta at the same time felt a tremor of apprehension pass slowly over her, and her hands grew icily cold. She could feel her mother's masterful will in the atmosphere of the room, and glancing tremulously askance at the widow's unfinished coiffure, every line of which seemed crisp with power, walked over to the hearth-rug.

Mrs. Delarayne's redness had now vanished. She was if anything a little pale, and she turned to face her daughter.

"I am not angry, Leo," she began with terrifying suavity, "but I felt I really could not explain all these things to you,"--she waved a hand over the mass of articles displayed on the dressing-table,-- "in front of Wilmott. You see, servants have to take these things for granted without explanation."

Leonetta felt her ears beginning to burn furiously. Her mother could be terrible.

"Yes, you see now," continued the widow, "how worrying and how difficult are the means which I have to use to make myself presentable. Age is a tiresome thing, is it not? It is so much more simple when one is young."

The invincible "Warrior" smiled kindly, and saw that tears were gathering in her daughter's eyes.

"Would you perhaps like me to go through these things with you, and explain them to you one by one?" she continued. "I have had to learn it all myself. I might save you a good many pitfalls in the remote future."

Leonetta's throat was dry, and her lips were parched.

"No, thank you," she replied hoarsely, and she made quickly towards the door.

"You have not told me what you wanted to say," said her mother playfully.

"I'll tell you later on," rejoined the girl in broken tones.

"Then will you please ring for Wilmott?" said Mrs. Delarayne, turning calmly to face her mirror again.

And after savagely pressing the bell, the flapper vanished.

With her eyes blinded by stinging tears, and feeling very much more maddened by regret than by mortification, Leonetta fled to her room. She was not only staggered, she was also thoroughly ashamed. A boy suddenly butted by a lamb, which he had believed he might torment with impunity, could not have felt more astonished. A convert brought face to face with the livid wounds which, in her days of unbelief, she had inflicted upon a Christian martyr could not have felt more deeply dejected and penitent. Like a flash, an old emotion of childhood had filled her breast; an old emotion that seemed only to have gathered strength in the intervening years,--that blind, unthinking and dependent love of the infant for its mother.

Should she go back and throw herself at the wonderful woman's knees?

Should she set out her plea for forgiveness in the folds of her mother's dress as she had done as a baby? No, Wilmott would be there,--Wilmott and everything besides! Moreover,--she looked in the glass,--her face was distraught, her ears flared, her eyes still smarted horribly. Even if Wilmott were dismissed as before, the girl would guess something.

Slowly she proceeded with her dressing, and, as she did so, a certain vague delicacy of feeling, a sort of secret reverence for her brave youth-loving mother downstairs, kept her from glancing too frequently in the glass. The contrast now, instead of elating her, simply accentuated her reminiscence of guilt. The very speed with which she adjusted her hair and made it "presentable," as her mother had expressed it, brought back the cruel memory of what had happened only a few minutes previously.

In being thus affected by Mrs. Delarayne's able and perfectly relentless handling of a difficult situation; in feeling her love for her mother intensified backwards, so to speak, to the degree it had attained in infancy, as the result of the incident, Leonetta showed not only that she was worthy of her incomparable mother, but also that she had survived less unimpaired, than some might have thought, the questionable blessings of a finishing education.

Mrs. Delarayne who, without being truculently triumphant, was nevertheless mildly conscious of having scored a valuable and highly desirable point, repaired to the drawing-room twenty minutes later in a mood admirably suited to giving her guests a warm and hearty welcome.

Cleopatra was the first to join her. Each woman honestly thought that she had rarely seen the other look quite so beautiful, and the comments that were exchanged were as sincere as they were flattering.

Mrs. Delarayne was too loyal to betray one sister to the other, so she did not refer to the incident in her bedroom. Occasionally, however, thoughts of it would make her glance a little anxiously in the direction of the door, and as she did so, she fervently hoped that the lesson she had administered to her younger daughter had not been too severe.

"I wonder what Baby can be doing all this time!" Cleopatra exclaimed at last.

"I'll go and see, I think," said Mrs. Delarayne, lifting her dress just slightly in front, and making towards the door.

"No, Edith," her daughter exclaimed, rising quickly. "I'll go. I cannot have you making yourself hot by climbing all those stairs. Please let me go!"

Mrs. Delarayne's wiry arm braced itself as her hand clasped the handle of the door. "I think I'd better go," she replied.

For the first time Cleopatra began to suspect that something had happened. She knew the relations existing between Leonetta and her mother, but as the latter had always been so surprisingly patient and long-suffering, she was very far from suspecting what had actually occurred.

Their hesitation was cut short for them by the arrival of the first guest, Sir Joseph Bullion, who, a moment later, was followed by Denis Malster, Guy Tyrrell, Agatha Fearwell and her brother Stephen (friends of Cleopatra's), and Miss Mallowcoid.

The last to enter the drawing-room was Leonetta. She had evidently dreaded encountering her mother and sister alone, and she had purposely waited till she heard the guests arrive before coming down. Although to those who knew her there were certain unusual signs of demurity in her expression and demeanour in the early part of the evening, she presented a dramatically beautiful appearance, and the sober reserve of her mood if anything enhanced this effect, by lending it the additional charm of mystery and inscrutableness.

Cleopatra was a little puzzled. Never had she expected that Leo would behave in this way, particularly in the presence of young men, and her feeling towards her sister underwent a momentary revulsion. She noticed that Denis scarcely took his eyes off her sister; but she also observed that Leo hardly ever responded, and simply talked quietly and demurely on to Guy Tyrrell or Stephen Fearwell. She could not understand, nor did her deepest wishes allow her to suspect, that her sister's delightfully sober mood was only a transient one.

During the dinner a slight diversion was created by Leonetta's addressing her parent as "Mother." But the poor child was so confused when she realised what she had done, and particularly when she thought of why she had done it, that everybody except Miss Mallowcoid endeavoured to ease the situation by being tremendously voluble.

After what had occurred between herself and her mother, the cold and distant appellation "Edith" did not spring naturally or spontaneously to Leonetta's lips. On the other hand "Peachy" seemed to belong to another and previous existence. She did not wish her mother to suspect, however, that she had used the term "mother" with deliberate intent to annoy.

"That's right, my child," cried Miss Mallowcoid. "It is really refreshing to hear one of you girls, at least, addressing your mother in the usual and proper fashion!"

Leonetta with her cheeks ablaze, glared at her aunt menacingly.

"Well, I don't like it," she blurted out. "It was a slip of the tongue.

Cleo and I much prefer the name Edith."

She spoke sharply and even rudely, seeing that it was her aunt she was addressing, but Mrs. Delarayne, who was beginning to understand the penitential spirit she was in, smiled kindly at her notwithstanding.

"I always look upon them as three sisters," Sir Joseph exclaimed somewhat laboriously, "whatever they call one another."

Miss Mallowcoid scoffed, and Mrs. Delarayne patted his hand persuasively. "You get on with your dinner," she said playfully.

Meanwhile Miss Mallowcoid had not taken her vindictive eyes off her younger niece, and the latter in sheer desperation plunged into an animated but very perfunctory conversation with her right-hand neighbour, Guy Tyrrell.

It is time that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,--particularly if she happened to be a flapper.

His age was twenty-seven.

It is not generally understood what precisely is implied by the so-called healthy "clean-minded" unmarried Englishman of twenty-seven, or thereabouts. As a rule the epithet "clean-minded" sums up not merely a mental condition, but a method of life. It signifies that the young man to whom it may justly be applied is either a master, or at least a lover, of games, that his outlook is what is known as "breezy," that he observes the rules of cricket in every relation to his fellow creatures, and that he is capable of enduring defeat or success with the same impassable calm and good-nature. Now it would be absurd to deny that here we have a very imposing catalogue of highly desirable characteristics; it would, however, be equally absurd to claim that the person in whom they are all happily combined, necessarily displays, side by side with his mastery of games and his deep understanding of cricket in particular, that mastery or understanding of the mysteries of life, that virtuosity in the art of life, which would constitute him a desirable mate. There is a _savoir faire_, there are problems and intricacies in life, which no degree of familiarity with cricket, no vast fund of experience in the football field, can help a man to master; and it is even questionable whether a young man's ultimate destiny as a husband and a father, far from being assisted, is not even seriously complicated by the extent to which he must have specialised in games and sports in order to earn for himself the whiteflower of "clean-mindedness." It is the wives of such men who are in a position to throw the most light on this question. There is no doubt that they frequently have a tale to tell; but the best among them are naturally disinclined to admit the very serious reasons they may have for disliking the silver trophies that adorn their homes.

As the dinner wore on, animation waxed greater; Sir Joseph dropped an ever-increasing number of aspirates, and Leonetta was actually heard to laugh quite merrily.

Cleopatra still noticed that Denis was very much interested in her, and also observed that, from time to time, Leonetta now responded to his attentive scrutiny.

The conversation turned on gymnastics. Denis, Guy, and Leonetta all seemed to be talking at once; it was a subject that Cleopatra did not know much about.

"We always had three quarters of an hour's gym a day," said Leonetta, looking straight at Denis.

He laughed. "Oh, well," he exclaimed, "you have done me. I haven't touched parallel bars or a trapeze for ten years."