Delarayne.

"You must play in the next game," she said, regarding her daughter a little anxiously.

"Oh, I'm sick of tennis," Cleopatra sighed. "I hate all games."

"You used to like it so!" her mother expostulated.

Then suddenly there came the sound of shrieks from the direction of the lawn, and Guy's voice was heard again: "I say, Denis, old man," it said, "do attend to the game, please; you can flirt with Leonetta later on."

Cleopatra put down her embroidery with a jerk and pressed a hand spasmodically to her brow. "Don't you think it's dreadfully hot here?"

she exclaimed.

Mrs. Delarayne frowned. "My dear, you couldn't have a cooler place in all Brineweald. Take some lemonade." Then after a pause during which she made another brief examination of her daughter's looks, she added: "I certainly think you ought to go and lie down; but I do wish they wouldn't shout so."

Then she took up her novel again.

A few minutes passed thus, Mrs. Delarayne pretending to read, and wondering all the while whether Agatha had not perhaps overstated Cleopatra's trouble; and Cleopatra working frantically like one who is determined not to think at all.

All of a sudden Leonetta came racing down the path from the lawn, and dashed past her mother and sister, with Denis close at her heels.

Mrs. Delarayne looked up, and her expression was one of annoyance. She saw Denis catch her younger daughter just as she reached the shrubbery concealing the kitchen end of the house from the garden.

"Leo, will you give that up!" panted Denis.

They were only a few yards away, and Mrs. Delarayne followed the whole proceeding with a frown. "Well, tell me first what it is!" rejoined the flapper, holding her hands behind her back, and smiling defiantly at him.

"I thought you two were playing tennis," Mrs. Delarayne cried aloud, with just a suggestion of indignation, and craning her neck so as to be seen by them.

"Oh, we've done with that long ago," Leonetta replied, obviously a little excited.

"It's my note-book," said Denis, "it must have fallen out of my pocket."

He caught the girl by the arm, and she laughed. Then quickly shaking him off, she dashed up the garden with Denis close behind her.

"The game of chasing and being chased," said a familiar voice, and Cleopatra looked up. It was Vanessa, followed by all the motoring party.

"Yes, the oldest game of mankind," added Sir Joseph.

"And one of which I suppose the human female never grows tired," Mrs.

Delarayne observed rising.

"Any excuse will do," Vanessa continued, resting a hand gently on Cleopatra's shoulder. "Won't it, Cleo dear?"

Cleopatra darted up, saw that her mother was too much engaged greeting the party from the Park to notice her disappearance, and made rapidly towards the house.

"Isn't Cleo well?" Miss Mallowcoid demanded, her eyebrows high up in her fringe with indignant surprise.

"It surely isn't as bad as all that!" ejaculated the unfortunate widow.

"Do you notice it too?"

"It certainly is very noticeable, I should have thought," Vanessa remarked.

Mrs. Delarayne then begged the young Jewess to find out what Cleopatra was doing, and to persuade her if possible to lie down. She thereupon conducted her guests to a small marquee where tea was laid, and called to the tennis-players to join them.

In a moment Vanessa returned.

"She doesn't want me," she exclaimed. "She says she wants to be alone."

"But isn't she going to have any tea?" cried Mrs. Delarayne shrilly.

"Later on, she said," the Jewess replied.

"How full of caprice these young things are!" interjected Miss Mallowcoid. "Why, she did not even wish us good-day!"

"The truth is," said Mrs. Delarayne, "Cleo hates being ill, and probably wished to avoid being asked questions."

"Oh, how natural that is!" Mrs. Tribe observed, glancing half fearfully at Miss Mallowcoid.

"You've made this place look very pretty," said Sir Joseph, smiling unctuously at his hostess; "charming, charming! A perfect setting for a--for a precious----"

"Here, you want some refreshment," snapped Miss Mallowcoid gruffly.

"Edith, where's Sir Joseph's cup?"

Sir Joseph laughed a little boisterously, and the tennis players arrived.

"Where's Cleo?" was Leonetta's first question. She looked hot and excited, but extremely happy.

Miss Mallowcoid explained that Cleo was in one of her "precious" moods, as she put it. She had never been a great favourite with her nieces, and since the fuel of affection is so largely a distillation of vanity, she did not feel much love towards them. Her remark, however, succeeded in making Mrs. Delarayne fill Sir Joseph's saucer with tea.

"That's not kind," said the widow, glaring first at her sister and then at Denis. "Cleo, I'm afraid, is not very well."

"The heat perhaps," lisped the Incandescent Gerald.

"And other things," added Agatha, in her quiet, eloquent way.

Her brother Stephen stared perplexedly at her for some seconds, and then looked round the party with an air of utter bewilderment.

"Ah, these young people will do too much!" Sir Joseph remarked solemnly.

Then turning to his hostess he added: "It was the same at the time of the bicycle craze in the early nineties,--but you would scarcely remember that, my dear lady!"

"What!" ejaculated Miss Mallowcoid. "Edith not remember the bicycle craze of the nineties! My dear Sir Joseph, what absurd rubbish!"

Miss Mallowcoid was beginning to make her sister feel what the doctors call "febrile."

"You so frequently jump at wrong conclusions in your efforts to set the world right, my dear Bella," she said with bitter precision. "Surely one's life may be so full of other preoccupations that one can forget even the most startling events."

"Oh, I see what you mean," said Miss Mallowcoid, speaking with her mouth full of very dry short-bread, "I didn't know he meant it in that way."

Sir Joseph was about to exclaim that he did not, as a matter of fact, mean it "in that way"; but realising the hyperbolic quality of his intended compliment, he preferred to appear eager to swallow the end of a chocolate _eclair_ rather than attempt to explain.