These ladies formed the branch of her subject on which she most swayed in the breeze; to that degree that her confidant had ended with an inference or two tending to banish regret for opportunities not embraced.

There were indeed tea-gowns that Mrs.Jordan described--but tea-gowns were not the whole of respectability, and it was odd that a clergyman's widow should sometimes speak as if she almost thought so.

She came back, it was true, unfailingly to Lord Rye, never, evidently, quite losing sight of him even on the longest excursions.

That he was kindness itself had become in fact the very moral it all pointed--pointed in strange flashes of the poor woman's nearsighted eyes.

She launched at her young friend portentous looks, solemn heralds of some extraordinary communication.