"Oliver Wyse was at lunch too on the occasion, was he? How is he getting on?" "Sir Oliver is still his usual agreeable, composed, competent, and, I'm inclined to think, very wilful self." "Patient, though?" The question came with a mischievous glance. Judith's retort was ironic, both with eyes and tongue. "I permit myself any amount of comment on character but no conjecture as to facts. That's the distinction between studying human nature and gossiping, Esther." "Don't snub me! And the distinction's rather a fine one." "No, gossip's all right for you, living outside the house. I live so much inside it that I think it wouldn't be fair in me. And above all, owing to the footing on which I'm there--as I've told you--I am emphatically not a watch-dog." "Where's the child?" "She's down at Hilsey--with the old housekeeper Mrs. Gates--by doctor's orders." "Again! Have you any comment to make on the doctor's character?" "I think you're being malicious. It's really better for the child to be in the country. We're very busy, all of us, and very gay--a bustle all the time. If she were here, she'd only be with a nurse in the Park or in the nursery. And we're only just back from three weeks at Hilsey ourselves." "Yes, I think I was being malicious," Esther admitted. "I suppose we're all jealous of Bernadette in our hearts, and talk like cats about her! Well, you don't!" "It would be ungrateful of me. She affords me a very great deal of pleasure. Besides, she's my aunt." "Well--by marriage." "Oh yes, entirely by marriage," Miss Arden agreed with one of her fleeting smiles. She implied that no other form of auntship would be, as the advertisements say, "entertained" by Bernadette. "And even as to that I have, by request, dropped the titles, both for her and Godfrey," she added.