The first walk they had taken with the three young men and Cleopatra and her sister had been typical of much that followed.

In the middle of a conversation in which Vanessa's native Jewish wit was beginning to tell against the more homely gifts of the rest of the party, Leonetta would suddenly fall back, stand in an attitude of rapt attention over a brook, a well, a wild flower, a plank bridge, a pool, or anything; and, at a signal from her, the three men of the party would quickly rally to her halting place, and enter heartily into whatever spirit the object contemplated was supposed to stimulate.

It was usually the merest trifle that caused her thus to arrest for a moment the forward movement of her companions, and to interrupt a conversation to boot; but Vanessa alone had the penetration to see the unfailing instinct for power, the unflagging determination to be the centre of attention, which prompted this simple strategy, on Leonetta's part; and rather than compete with it,--seeing that it was practised with all the usual efficiency of unconsciousness,--she saved herself the vexation of possible defeat by yielding quietly to Leonetta the supremacy she apparently insisted upon having. Thus, while she kept a steady eye upon Denis Malster, whose manner had captivated her from the start, she was content, or rather discontent, to note step by step Guy Tyrrell's blundering innocence in attempted courtship.

Agatha, accustomed as she was to the role of padding in life, fell back on her devoted brother, and used such influence as she possessed over him, to keep his mind well aired and cool amid the slightly overheating breezes of that memorable midsummer.

Cleopatra, on the other hand, not so wise perhaps as Vanessa, certainly not so ready to retire as Agatha, and possibly less able to feel if not to simulate indifference, than either of them, plunged into the conflict with a vigour and a degree of animation which made her almost as unbearable to the other girls as Leonetta herself. Again, however, Vanessa was shrewd enough to realise the emergency Cleopatra was in, and forgave her much that left Agatha painfully wondering. For Cleopatra the fight was a serious one. It called for all her resources and all her skill. Unfortunately she lacked Leonetta's fertility in finding means by which to draw the general attention upon herself, and being overanxious as well, her tactics frequently failed. She would descend to every shift to thwart her sister's wiles,--only to find, however, that it was more often Stephen Fearwell or the Incandescent Gerald, than Guy and Denis, who allowed themselves to be diverted from their orbit round Leonetta, to attend to her.

At tennis it would be a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it would be a peculiar pebble,--anywhere, everywhere, there was always something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still, until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself, had run all agog to her side.

Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat, when they are combated consciously, is literally exhausting. In two or three days Cleopatra was exhausted.

Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again, every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the role of queen of the party.

Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had thus held up the game for a moment; and the solution was hard to find.

She knew that even a brighter remark from herself would not have so much as caused them to interrupt their service; but she was imperfectly acquainted with the psychology of rulership, and did not understand that when once, by fair means or foul, a certain member of a party has by her own unaided efforts elevated herself to the position of its queen, everything ostensibly witty that proceeds from her mouth is greeted with obsequious laughter by her devoted subjects.

Indeed, in order not to appear a spoilsport, Cleopatra was at last reduced to the humiliating resort of joining in the courtly merriment which appeared to her so extravagantly to result from her sister's mildest jests.

To say that by this time she was feeling a slight sinking sensation in the region of her heart, would be to express with scrupulous moderation what was actually taking place. For Cleopatra, theretofore, had held her own against the best. A good rider, a splendid shot, with almost a professional form in tennis and golf, and a good swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when she craved for those more sober moods in which her less volatile virtues could make a good display.

She was beginning to find her sister's hard, unrelenting rivalry difficult to forgive, and the steady shaping of a dreaded feeling of loathing for the cause of her partial eclipse began to cause her some alarm.

Thus each day ended with a tacit, concealed, but very real victory for Leonetta, without her sister deriving any further satisfaction from the unavowed contest, than an aching weariness both of body and spirit.

Meanwhile Vanessa, more piqued by her whilom "sweetheart's" increasing neglect of her than by that young lady's inordinate success with the men, would come on the scene in the evening with all the advantage of being less jaded than Cleopatra by the day's incessant duel, and then would frequently score point after point against her schoolmate, without ever revealing a sign of the eagerness she felt for the fray. In addition she made herself a great favourite of the wealthy baronet, and recognising in him a means of possibly exercising some power over Denis, cultivated his affection by every wile of which her clever race made her capable.

Denis Malster was obviously the most staggered by the turn events had taken. Bewildered and fascinated by Leonetta's art of blowing hot and cold, as the spirit moved her, kept constantly alert by the rapid changes of her caprice, he had come to have eyes and ears only for her imperious youth. If she ran off with Guy Tyrrell or with Stephen Fearwell,--a mere boy,--he grew grave, meditative, taciturn; when she returned he resumed his role of obsequious courtier without either reserve or concealment. And who can be more obsequious to a pretty schoolgirl than an Englishman of thirty?

The British are known all over the world for their stamina, for the grit and tenacity with which they can play a losing game; nay, it is even reported that they have frequently turned a losing game into a victory by this very capacity for stubborn patience in adversity.

Cleopatra lacked none of the qualities which have made the British nation famous. She, too, could play a losing game with dignity, grace, and pride; even if, as in this case, it was the cruellest game that a girl can be called upon to play. Perhaps, too, she noticed the conflict that had started in Denis Malster's heart; or maybe she simply saw the unmistakable signs of his dawning passion. But, in any case, and as quickly as surely as she realised that he was becoming enslaved to her sister, his charms underwent a mysterious intensification in her eyes that only aggravated the difficulties of her position.

Certainly he had not made the first advances. Or, if he had, they had been too subtle to be observed. What woman, moreover, really believes that a man is ever guilty in the traffic of the sexes? She had, however, been compelled to notice her sister's manoeuvres. They had been unmistakable, untiring, unpardonable.

At times she had even been constrained to admire the skill with which Guy Tyrrell, Stephen Fearwell, and the Incandescent Gerald himself had been employed by Leonetta in the business of tormenting Denis into a state of complete subjection. Every means was legitimate to Leonetta. If she could not pretend to read a man's hand, she would make a cat's cradle with him; if she could not take his arm, she would plead sudden fatigue in order that he might take her hand to pull her up hill; if she picked a wild rose, a thorn would be sure to remain buried in the skin of her finger, which at some propitious moment would require to be laboriously removed by one of the male members of the party.

A girl may struggle with fortitude against such a determined dispute for supremacy; she may deploy her whole strength and even contrive parallel manoeuvres of her own; but even when she is not less beautiful than her rival, as was the case with Cleopatra, the more conscious of the two engaged in such a match is bound in the end to be less happy in her discoveries, less spontaneous in her inventions, and therefore less successful in her results. For natural spontaneity is quickly felt and appreciated by a group of fellow-beings, as is also the element of vexation and overanxiousness, which Cleopatra was beginning to reveal despite all her efforts at concealment.

The most unnerving, the most jading, however, of all her self-imposed performances at this moment, was the constraint to laugh and be merry, when others laughed and were merry over the frequently empty horse-play of her sister.

It was this particularly that was beginning to tell against her in the duel. And as fast as she felt herself losing ground, as surely as she felt her hold on Denis slackening, the old gnawing sensation at her heart, which had first been felt years before when Leonetta had ceased to be a child, would assert itself with hitherto unwonted painfulness, unprecedented insistence, until it began like a disease to come between her and her meals, and, worse than all, to engage her attention when she ought to have been sleeping.

Thus during these wonderful summer days, while all nature was proud with her magnificent display, while the sun poured down its splendour without stint upon the homely Kentish coast, Cleopatra, nodding and bowing in the breeze, like any other flower, fragrant and unhandseled like the other blooms about her, and voluptuous and seductive like a full-blown rose, was yet aware of a parasitic germ in her heart that was eating her life-blood away. To her, alone, in all that party, the warm arms of the sun brandished javelins, and the calm riches of the landscape concealed jibes. The meanest field labourer seemed happier than she, the commonest insect more wanton and more free.

You would have passed her by without noticing that she was in any way different from her sister, except perhaps that she was obviously more mature. In her spirited glance and smile you would have detected nothing of the tempest in her soul, nothing of the fear in her heart. Only a botanist of the human spirit could have observed that subtle difference in her look, that suggestion of anxiety in her parted lips, which told the tale of her incomparably courageous, determined, undaunted, but sadly unavailing fight.

It was the night, the long silence alone, that she was beginning to dread. And those who dread the night show the lines of fear on their faces during the day. They laugh, they join in the general sport, their gait is light, their clothes may be gay, but at the back of their eyes, the sympathetic can see the previous night's vigil; and it is the haunting fear of experiencing it again that gives their voices, their words, their very laughter that ring of overanxiousness, that stamp of heavily overtaxed bravery.

Cleopatra dreaded the night; but she also dreaded the dawn. Denis, sunburnt, athletic, efficient at everything he undertook, Denis ironical, pensive, independent, Denis revealed anew to her in a way she had least expected, was obviously either humouring a flapper most shamelessly--or--or----

The alternative could not be articulated. To have pronounced it would have lent it a reality that it must not possess. It was, however, in the effort not to frame the alternative that her vigils were kept. And it is extraordinary how one can perspire even on the coolest night over such an effort.

CHAPTER X

"Peachy, what do you think has happened? Oh, _do_ guess!"

The voice was Leonetta's. The question was followed by a laugh, a laugh that spoke at once of triumph and merriment.

It was lunch-time on the morning of the ninth day of their holiday. Mrs.

Delarayne, in the garden of "The Fastness," was stretched on her _chaise-longue_ reading. Beside her Cleopatra, who had not felt inclined for a bathe that morning, and who, therefore, had not been into Stonechurch, was working at some fancy embroidery.

"I haven't any idea," Mrs. Delarayne replied, as Leonetta stalked up the garden path with Denis at her side, followed by Vanessa, Guy Tyrrell, and the Fearwells. They all had their wet bathing things with them, and even the matronly Vanessa had her hair hanging over her shoulders.

"Why, the man in the sweetstuff shop at the corner of the High Street took Denis and me for husband and wife!" Leonetta exclaimed, bursting with laughter once more.

Cleopatra's hand shook a little, but she did not look up.

"He probably noticed us waiting outside and thought you were the schoolmistress of the party,--that's all," interjected Vanessa.

Everybody laughed except Leonetta.

"That's absurd," she protested, "because he could scarcely have thought I could be----"

But her voice was drowned by more laughter, led chiefly by Vanessa.

"Oh, well, it's not worth arguing about, any way," said the Jewess, twirling her bathing dress round very rapidly.

"Don't do that!" cried Leonetta sharply. "Can't you see that you're simply drenching poor Peachy?"

Mrs. Delarayne smiled imperceptibly at this remark, and all the bathers ran off to prepare for lunch.

"I think," said the widow to her elder daughter, "that it would have been only considerate if Denis had offered to stay behind to keep you company this morning."

Cleopatra, bundling up her work with lightning speed, rose. Her ears were hot and red, and she could not let her mother see her face.

"Do you,--oh, well, I don't," she said a little tetchily, and made rapidly towards the house.

Mrs. Delarayne stared sadly after her. Had she said anything offensive?--Children were difficult, very difficult, she thought; and she longed for the freedom and the society of her London home.

"I think I made Denis rather savage this morning," Leonetta was explaining to Vanessa, meanwhile, as the two were arranging their hair in the bedroom they shared.

Vanessa, stopping her operations for a moment, turned and regarded her friend with some interest.