"Well, then,--what is the obvious conclusion?"

"I'm afraid I don't see it," she said.

"I say a certain height of brow is essential to a well-proportioned face," he remarked with cool persuasiveness. "But what lies beneath the brow? Come, Leonetta, you know!"

"The brain?" she suggested.

"Of course," he exclaimed. "And what is more, beneath the brow lies the thinking part of the brain. So that in order really to have a fair face we must have a fair proportion of brain."

She smiled and bowed her head.

"Peachy's clever, isn't she?" she demanded. "So I suppose we girls ought not to be so very dull."

"Don't believe those who tell you beautiful people are stupid. It is the ugly who say that to console themselves. Just as the fools of the world write books about geniuses being mad."

She laughed. "You do say funny things!" she cried.

"Funny?" he repeated.

"Well, true things then. I wish everybody talked as you do. One feels so much safer to know the truth about everything."

At this point, however, Cleopatra came towards them from the house.

"I've found Edith at last," she exclaimed. "She's with the others in the marquee near the rose garden. We're just going to have tea. Are you coming?"

Lord Henry jumped down from his perch, and Leonetta ran indoors.

"I'll follow you in a moment," she cried gleefully.

Lord Henry and Cleopatra sauntered towards the rose garden. "Have people been telling you how very much you've improved?" he demanded.

She bowed her head and flushed slightly.

"I don't say it because I wish to hear compliments," he pursued.

"You've done wonders; you know it," she said, not daring to look at him in her agitation.

"It is you who have done wonders," he replied.

She smiled and looked away.

These two people could not talk to each other. It was impossible. All attempts hitherto had failed, except just that first attempt when Lord Henry had received the girl's stirring confession. It was as if both were trying their mightiest to abide strictly by conventionalities in order to keep within bounds. It was as if neither of them dared to give their tongues a free rein. Never had Lord Henry felt so utterly tongue-tied in a woman's presence; never had Cleopatra looked so serene while completely incapable of noisy cheerfulness.

"How splendid those two look side by side!" Sir Joseph exclaimed as they approached the marquee.

Mrs. Delarayne felt a twinge in her heart, and as she proceeded to pour out tea, her loathing for Denis Malster received such a sudden access of strength that she found it hard to be civil.

"I don't quite see," she snapped, "why they look more splendid side by side, as you put it, than one by one."

Miss Mallowcoid cast a glance full of reproach at her sister, and wondered what it was that induced Sir Joseph to submit as kindly as he did, day after day, to such monstrous treatment.

CHAPTER XVI

There was a dance at Brineweald that evening, and everybody who was anybody in the neighbourhood had been invited. The Vicar's family, the doctor's children, the Swynnertons from Barbacan, the Blights from the Castle, and one or two people from Folkestone, were among the guests, while a band had been ordered down from Ashbury for the occasion.

Lord Henry was entirely satisfied with the arrangement. It was calculated to keep the two Brineweald households under his eye the whole evening, and to prevent those wanderings which, while they complicated his task, also made it difficult for him to follow developments.

To Denis Malster, on the other hand, the dance was a most unwelcome disturbance. Fearing from the turn events had taken that day that he had not gone far enough with Leonetta in order to be able to rely absolutely on her single-minded attachment, he foresaw that the dance that evening would offer few opportunities, if any, of repairing his omission, and he was accordingly not in the best of moods to enjoy it.

As the sufferer from some fatal disease is the last to be convinced that his condition is hopeless, so the ardent lover, for whom things are going none too smoothly, is the last to be persuaded that he is really losing ground.

He will ascribe his rebuffs to a passing whim on the part of his beloved, to a momentary lapse in her customary humour, to her food, to a desire on her part to test him, to transitory evil influences from outside, to the thermometer, the barometer, the moon!--in fact to anything, except to the possibility that she could actually have cooled towards him; and the more overpowering his arrogance happens to be, the more complex and subtle will be the explanations which his imagination will furnish for the unpleasant change in his affairs.

That Denis was beginning to feel a deadly hatred for Lord Henry scarcely requires to be stated. In fact, this feeling in him was so irrepressible, so rapacious, that it grasped even at morsels of nourishment it could not obtain, in the desire to strengthen itself.

Thus he had actually come to believe that Lord Henry was a charlatan; he was prepared to prove that he had immoral intentions against every girl in his immediate neighbourhood, and he was completely satisfied that, like Mrs. Delarayne, Lord Henry was decades older than he admitted.

Meanwhile, however, a thousand petty but significant trifles showed Denis that he no longer exercised that power over Leonetta, and could no longer claim that whole-hearted devotion from her, which had marked their relationship only a day or two previously. The girl no longer gave him her entire attention, neither did she appear to tax her brain to the same extent as theretofore in order to engross his every thought. From a solid union which defied all interference, and which therefore made all interested spectators feel uneasy, their relationship had relaxed into a harmless and hearty friendship. But it was Leonetta who was shaking herself loose, and the more tightly Denis clung to the strands of their former intimacy, the more tenuous these seemed to become,--just as if his hold on them were more frantic than their strength could bear.

These signs were naturally not lost on Cleopatra. On the contrary, she registered them every one with the accuracy of a trained observer. And as surely as the cumulative evidence of all she saw began to point with ever greater precision in the direction of her sister's fickleness and mutability, the more her health improved, and the more cheerful she became. It is remarkable how the state of being overanxious spoils a creature's humour and mars the brightest sally. A week previously Cleopatra could say nothing, however bright, that did not fall flat, even beside a less brilliant outburst of her sister's.

Now, with her increasing serenity, with her restored sleep, and with her mind at rest about the issue, she recovered her lost spirits; her voice once more began to be heard at table as often as Leonetta's, and the traditional savour of Delarayne humour was maintained as faithfully by the elder as by the younger of the two daughters.

Lord Henry watched this improvement in his patient with lively interest and amusement, but he quite well realised, notwithstanding, that the means he had used had been exceptional, and could scarcely have been recommended as practicable therapeutics to every practising physician in England. Nevertheless, he felt that he had not yet completely discharged his duty to Mrs. Delarayne, whom he loved sufficiently to serve with zeal; and as he walked down to Sir Joseph's ballroom that evening he was half aware that only the first stage in his campaign had been successfully fought.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Tribes, Leonetta and her sister, he had made many friends at Brineweald. Stephen and his sister were devoted to him,--so in his way was Guy Tyrrell; while it was only Sir Joseph's constant dread of the young nobleman's mysterious power over Mrs.

Delarayne that prevented him, too, from becoming one of Lord Henry's devoted adherents.

The dance was a great success. With scrupulous care Lord Henry divided his attentions equally between Mrs. Delarayne and her two daughters, and thus broke into Denis Malster's programme with Leonetta with devastating effect. This young man was bound to dance a few dances with Mrs.

Delarayne and her elder daughter; he was also obliged, out of regard for Sir Joseph, to attend to some of the baronet's guests; and thus, when it came to his turn to claim Leonetta, he was scarcely in a mood to be fascinating.

"What's the matter with you?" he whispered angrily to her, as they swept up the ballroom.

"Nothing--what do you mean?" she rejoined.

"You're not the same. Have I done anything to upset you?"

"No----"

"Well, tell me, Leo,--tell me what it is! You have been hateful to me the whole day."

"My dear boy, I haven't. What have I done? I'm just the same, if you are."

"Just the same?" Denis snorted. "Why, look how you treated me on the terrace!"

"Oh, that!"